Lost Children Archive

Lost Children Archive incorporates several different kinds of archives and inventories of archived items, including transcriptions of the recorded “Inventory of Echoes,” listed descriptions of items inside each family members’ archive boxes, and allusions to the objects left behind in the desert by migrants attempting to cross the border. What function do these archive inventory lists serve in the novel? How do these notes interact with the novel’s overlapping narratives? How does the novel itself act as a kind of archive?

Lost Children Archive is filled with both literal and figurative echoes. Choose at least two different kinds of “echoes” and compare their evolutions throughout Lost Children Archive. Considering these echoes, how do you interpret the family’s return to Echo Canyon?

From the mother’s insistence on using paper maps (versus GPS) to the boy’s hand-drawn route to the Xs (which he believes represent Manuela’s daughters), maps are a reoccurring motif throughout Lost Children Archive. How does Luiselli use these different images of maps (and different kinds of mapping) to comment on themes of loss and being lost?