The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life

Markham is a fiction writer, essayist, and journalist based in Berkeley, California. Markham has spent over a decade working with refugees and immigrants in nonprofits and schools, and she is an authority on international refugee issues and Central American and child migration in the United States. She received her MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and has received fellowships from the Mesa Refuge, the UC Berkeley 11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship, The French American Foundation, The Rotary Foundation, and the Middlebury Fellowship in Environmental Journalism. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, Harper’s, Orion, Guernica, Vice, Pacific Standard, TheNewYorker.com, and she is a contributing editor at VQR.

Raúl and Ernesto are Salvadorian twin brothers who migrated to the United States to escape gang violence. Raúl and Ernesto’s story embodies the physical, emotional, psychological, and monetary struggles of unaccompanied migrant children. The twins live in northern California, along with their brother Wilber Jr. and Ernesto’s daughter, Isabella. Ernesto and Raúl have received their green cards and are legal United States residents.

Wilber Jr. is Raúl and Ernesto’s older brother. He migrated north seven years before the twins’ journey. When the twins arrive in California, Wilber Jr. provides them with shelter, clothes, and food, and he becomes their legal guardian.