Spirit Run: A 6000-Mile Marathon Through North America's Stolen Land
By: Noé Álvarez / Narrated By: Ramón de Ocampo
Length: 5 hrs and 19 mins
Some lovely writing, some good imagery, but an awful lot of negativity in there also makes this painful at times…
Yup: I read the Publisher’s Summary before purchasing this cuz I was looking for something awesome for Hispanic Heritage Month. That the Summary intimated there would be musings and attention given to Native Peoples of the Americas? Oh holy cow! I was THERE!
Author Noé Álvarez opens this book, Spirit Run, with slug-to-the-guts writing and imagery. He’s joined his mother and worked alongside her at an apple-packing plant where stooped shoulders, varicose veins, a lack of dreams are the name of the day. Tho he’s had more education than his parents, both Mexican immigrants, he barely hopes for a future as he sees and feels how soul crushing this existence is. A chance to go to college buoys him… until reality bites him in the backside.
He’s given a chance at the college, but he definitely feels himself to be a fish out of water, and he struggles mightily, in his classes, even in the dining halls—He is unlike anyone else there. By chance, he discovers the Peace and Dignity Journey, an epic run by Native American/First Nations peoples where the Americas are traversed from Canada to Guatemala, running through Native communities in a 4-month long quest to bring healing and awareness. Álvarez, flailing and reeling and unmoored in college, sees the Dean and begs for help: He NEEDS to be part of this; he’s lost and hopes he can find himself along the way.
Sounds great, right? And that Álvarez has the soul of a poet is wonderful (Except for a tortured metaphor here and there… which a good editor should’ve questioned…)—truly some lovely, lyrical, and often brutal writing elevate this account of his time on the run with other Native individuals with troubled pasts.
Alas, what the story most often tells us is of leaders of PDJ being petty, of being bullies, of totally withholding acceptance, of tormenting those runners who might be weaker. There are some good parts, Álvarez does a lot of soul-searching, but more often than not, we’re privy to inside fighting and to leaders throwing him out of the van to run and run and run some more, even as his knees become fluid-filled sacks, swelling to the size of melons. He’s constantly told he’s deadweight; he’s constantly told that he, amongst others, are draining precious marathon resources—even water is withheld. Truly, this was one ugly, ugly journey, and I had to search far and wide through this tale to find anything brave or noble about the Pride and Dignity Journey.
So of course the writing was the best part, and there’s one incredibly moving bit where Álvarez, forced to run up a mountain, by himself, when he’s injured, comes upon a mountain lion, and he has to confront his fears, name his sorrow—which happens to be understanding just how much sorrow and backbreaking labor his parents endured to give him a better life. He feels such gratitude, but it’s mixed with such grief, that Thank You cannot be said but must be shouted at the mountain lion. Total tear in my eye for that one… mixed with anger at what PDJ leaders were making him do through their helter skelter demands, their sheer vindictiveness.
There’s an epilogue of sorts, of what happened to him and to the other runners, and it’s about as elevating or as tragic as you would expect. Álvarez, after going back to finish and further his education, winds up in a lowbrow job, contemplating his identity as just another cog, just the way his childhood dictated his life should go. And with Ramon de Ocampo’s expert narration, we feel quite a sense of heartbreak. Throughout the narrative, de Ocampo has guided us through the despair of childhood and young adulthood, so when we get to closed doors, and a lack of opportunities later in life it’s, like, most disappointing and even distressingly depressing.
I s’pose this is a Boy Makes Good on his life, especially coming from two hardworking parents who suffered through their own loss of dreams as they worked as labor. And it’s through the contemplation of his roots that we get the most heartfelt writing, the most dramatic imagery—you wind up wanting so much for this family.
It’s just that in this audiobook, reality is ugly. A journey of peace and dignity is all bullying and negative tensions; an opportunity of higher education is grasped but comes to nothing; stellar writing also comes with a few unfortunate metaphors. It was a good book, and I don’t regret listening to it.
It’s just that it kinda sorta made me wanna shoot m’self.
I came to like Álvarez so much, came to honor the suffering his Mexican immigrant parents went through, that I’m hoping, rather desperately, that all is working out well for him and his family right now.
MUST Google him to find out the way the rest of the story goes. Cuz right now? The way it ends? I’m feeling sore-disheartened by what the Summary SAID would be a story of finding one’s self through nature and struggle, a journey of healing through solidarity…
Uhm…? NOT…
:(
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