Somos Como Las Nubes We Are like the Clouds by Jorge Argueta

Bibliography

Argueta, Jorge. Somos Como Las Nubes = We Are like the Clouds. Toronto, CA: House of Anansi Press, 2016. 

Summary

In this collection of poems, Jorge Argueta shares the experiences of migrant children from Central America. Readers will learn more about the hardships, hard decisions, and hope of a people group who is often misunderstood. 

Analysis

Jorge Argueta’s book Somos Como Las Nubes: We Are like the Clouds is a collection of poems about the experiences of young migrants. This lyrical and moving account is written side by side in both spanish and the english translation by Elisa Amado. This book is an instrument in understanding the motivations of young people to leave their home countries and make their way to the United States. Readers can look at this book as a window into the lives of those unlike them, and many readers might see their own stories or the stories of their family members reflected in the poems. Nature is often personified in it such as “its water runs smiling” and “each star,/ like her hand,/ guides me with its light” emphasizing the connection between the people and the land. The message of the book is a hopeful one. As one character imagines a different life he says, “we’d all be brother and sister/ the world would be my home”. Along with the words are beautiful illustrations by Alfonso Ruano giving readers a visual of the experiences of these young people. With the poems El desierto (The Desert), Los grillos (The Crickets), and La arena del desierto (The Desert Sand) is an illustration of two young people sleeping on the ground with backpacks in their arms and in the distance is an older man in the distance either keeping watch or potentially the father of one of the voices of the poems who stayed behind. This book reminds us that a people group that is often vilified are in complicated situations that lead them to leaving their homes, but no matter what, they are still our brothers and sisters in humanity. 

Sample Poem

Somos como las nubes We Are Like the Clouds.

Somos como las nubes. We are like the clouds.

Somos como el viento. We are like the wind.

Somos como las mariposas. We are like the butterflies. 

Somos como los ríos. We are like the rivers. 

Somos como el mar. We are like the ocean.

Activity Ideas

Read the poem in Spanish and then in English. Read the spanish version and then have students choral read the English version of the text (or vice versa if you have spanish speaking readers).