Graphic Memoirs of Migration, Giving Young Readers Historical and Humanizing Frames of Reference

Meet our Contributor

Maite Urcaregui is an assistant professor of English and comparative literature at San José State University. Her research and teaching explore Latinx and multiethnic American literatures and comics through feminist, queer, and critical race theories and histories. She is co-editor with Fernanda Díaz-Basteris of Latinx Comics Studies: Critical and Creative Crossings (Rutgers University Press, 2025) and is currently working on her first book, which examines citizenship in multiethnic American graphic narratives.

Graphic Memoirs of Migration, Giving Young Readers Historical and Humanizing Frames of Reference by Maite Urcaregui

In a story from Minnesota Public Radio and Sahan Journal, teachers describe students disappearing from classrooms following increased ICE raids in the Twin Cities. According to Sahan Journal’s analysis, “as many as 1,700 students left the Minnesota school districts and charter schools with the highest percentage of English learners.” These empty desks visualize the effect of these ICE raids on children and families who feared deportation if they left home, a fear that is often hidden from public view, confined to homes and private spaces. As educators, how can we help our students make sense of these scenes of family separation and state-sponsored violence we’ve seen play out in the streets of Minneapolis and in other cities across the country? As scholars of young adult literature, what stories can we turn to for more humanizing images and frames of reference?
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To respond to these questions, I find myself turning to comics and graphic novels, not just because I enjoy reading them but because I find, when faced with images of violence, their blending of word and image can create alternative visual and narrative frames of reference. As Alison Halsall argues in Growing up Graphic: The Comics of Children in Crisis, “graphic texts can humanize experiences of migration from the perspective of young people and affirm their experiences of displacement and diaspora in the process” (56). In this post, I review three young adult graphic memoirs by and about Latinx people that trace different historical moments and different experiences of migration, citizenship, and national exclusion and belonging in the U.S.

Francisco Jiménez, Andrew J. Rostan, and Celia Jacobs’The Circuit: Graphic Novel 
​1940s-60s

The Circuit: Graphic Novel Edition (2024) is a graphic novel adaptation of Francisco Jiménez’s autobiographical short story collection The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child (1997). The graphic novel portrays Francisco’s migration from Jalisco, Mexico, to the U.S. as a young child as well as his family’s constant migrations across central California as they pursue farmwork. While Francisco’s family initially migrate to the U.S. undocumented, his father eventually receives a temporary work permit that gives him relative protection, but Francisco, his mother, and his siblings are left undocumented and unprotected, and the threat of la migra and deportation looms. This threat is realized when the graphic novel concludes with Francisco and his older brother Roberto being removed from school by INS agents and awaiting deportation.

Historically, the graphic novel takes place mostly during the 1950s, the second century of the Bracero Program, which “resulted in an influx of undocumented and documented laborers.” Thematically, the text disrupts linear narratives of migration. The graphic novel opens with the family’s experience crossing the border and concludes with the brothers’ deportation, but these moments are given relatively little narrative attention. Instead, Jiménez chooses to focus on Francisco’s experiences within the U.S. as his family moves from camp to camp, in a never-ending circuit of survival. The graphic novel form also does an excellent job depicting Francisco’s experience as a Spanish speaker and English language learner in the classroom. In his early school days, for instance, English is shown as a cacophony of unintelligible words and abstract symbols in speech ballons. 

Pedro Martín’s Mexikid: A Graphic Memoir 
​1970s

Pedro Martín’s Mexikid (2023) tells the story of his family’s road trip in a Winnebago from Watsonville, California, to Pegueros, Jalisco, to bring their aging abuelito across the border to live with them. Pedro, the young protagonist and narrator, has a fantastically humorous voice, which will connect with young readers and punctuates this story of border-crossing with playful moments. Pedro is a gifted storyteller and a self-identified nerd, and he weaves family stories and photographs with popular culture (superhero comics, action figures, popular tv, etc.) together on the page to tell a multi-generational story of migration.
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Historically, although Mexikid is set in 1977, it takes readers back to Mexico’s revolutionary history, picturing the longer histories that shape Mexican identity and immigration. As Pedro learns more about his grandfather’s experiences during the Revolution, he draws and, sometimes, embellishes these stories in the style of superhero comics. Thematically, the graphic memoir explores Pedro’s adolescent insecurities and his sense of place within his family. The text, while primarily in English, incorporates quite a bit of Spanish, along with footnoted translations, to represent the family’s bilingual experience. Finally, the graphic memoir depicts encounters with border patrol agents on both the U.S. and Mexico sides of border, but, like in The Circuit, the emphasis is not on the crossing per say but the longer journey, both literal and figuratively.

Just this month, Martín published a follow up titled Mexikid Dreams: A Graphic Memoir (2026), which explores his family’s experiences as farmworkers and Pedro’s dreams for his own future.

Alberto Ledesma’s Diary of a Reluctant Dreamer
1970s, 1980s, and 2010s

Alberto Ledesma’s Diary of a Reluctant Dreamer: Undocumented Vignettes from a Pre-American Life, published in 2017, blends the artist’s personal narrative of growing up undocumented with cartoons and reflections on the current political moment. Ledesma and his family immigrated to the U.S. in 1974 and eventually received citizenship through the amnesty provision of the Federal Immigration and Control Act of 1986. While recognizing the privileges and protections citizenship has afforded him, Ledesma reflects on the lasting effects of his undocumented youth, saying: “The twelve years that I spent living in the heart of East Oakland as an undocumented immigrant conditioned me in a profound way, and it deeply affected how I behaved as a student, an academic, and now, as a Berkeley staff member” (4). Many of the “undocumented vignettes” explore the tenuous way undocumented youth navigate educational settings, often becoming high achievers who, like Ledesma, are “hyper-documented” with educational degrees and awards to challenge deficit narratives of undocumented people.
 
Historically, Diary of a Reluctant Dreamer shows that it is possible to create pathways to citizenship and puts some of the federal policies of the past in conversation with our current moment, particularly in the aftermath of Trump’s first and second elections. Thematically, the text explores the invisible psychological and emotional consequences of being undocumented and forced to live “in the shadow,” as Ledesma says (38). These experiences are best illustrated, I believe, in a chapter of the book called “The Undocumented Alphabet.” In these series of single-panel cartoons, Ledesma harnesses the form of children’s picture books, specifically ABC books, to explore the experiences of undocumented children, youth, and their families and communities in ways that center their situated knowledges and epistemologies. 

Each of these graphic memoirs have different relationships to young adult literature. The Circuit, both the original short stories and the graphic novel adaptation (and I recommend reading and/or teaching both in tandem), sits on the edge of children’s and young adult literature, or “middle grade” (ages 8-12), although its nuanced discussions of labor politics, racial discrimination, and deportation will speak to older readers. Mexikid, a Newbery Honor Award Winner, is early young adult (ages 10-14) and captures all the insecurity, awkwardness, and humor of that age through Pedro’s first-person narration. Diary of a Reluctant Dreamer is not necessarily young adult literature. It features an adult narrator looking back on his undocumented youth through the distance of age and the protection of citizenship. That relationship between adult narrator and child protagonist, however, is at the heart of so much young adult literature, and I think Ledesma’s work illustrates some of the conversations around the adult author and child witness that have occupied YAL scholars.
 
These graphic memoirs of migration can help young readers look to the past to better understand our contemporary moment and the changing political realities that have compelled Latinx people to immigrate and have shaped their varied experiences of national belonging and exclusion. Their graphic memoir form, which visualizes the authors’ real, lived experiences on the page, can offer a humanistic counternarrative to the anti-immigrant discourse that plagues our national discourse. 

​There’s also something to be said of the role of fiction in this conversation. Jose Pimienta’s Twin Cities (2022) and Halfway to Somewhere (2025), Julio Anta and Jacoby Salcedo’s Frontera (2023), and Anta and Anna Wieszczyk’s Home (2021) are all great starting places, with Pimienta’s Halfway to Somewhere, a Stonewall Book Award Winner, being my personal favorite. 

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Wherever you start, I hope these graphic memoirs and comics do more than dazzle and distract us with their images; I hope they direct us to challenge anti-immigrant narratives and take action in our own classrooms and communities.

Works Cited

Chavez, Herman Luis, and María Guadalupe Partida. “A Latinx Resource Guide: Civil Rights Cases and Events in the United States” (1942: Bracero Program), edited by Suzanne Schadl and María Daniela Thurber. Library of Congress, 17 Aug. 2020, https://guides.loc.gov/latinx-civil-rights/bracero-program. Accessed 11 Sept. 2026.
 
Dernbach, Becky Z., and Cynthia Tu. “‘Kids literally disappeared’: Minnesota schools lost at least 1,700 students following Operation Metro Surge.” MPR News, 1 Sept. 2026, https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/09/01/sahan-minnesota-schools-lost-at-least-1700-students-after-ice-operation. Accessed 11 Sept. 2026.
 
Dernbach, Becky Z., and Cynthia Tu. “‘Kids literally disappeared’: Minnesota schools lost at least 1,700 students following Operation Metro Surge.” Sahan Journal, 31 Aug. 2026, https://sahanjournal.com/education/minnesota-schools-lost-1700-students-after-metro-surge/. Accessed 11 Sept. 2026.
 
Halsall, Alison. Growing Up Graphic: The Comics of Children in Crisis. The Ohio State University Press, 2023.
 
Ledesma, Alberto. Diary of a Reluctant Dreamer: Undocumented Vignettes from a Pre-American Life. The Ohio State University Press, 2017.

Works Referenced

Anta, Julio; Anna Wieszczyk; Bryan Valenza; and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou. Home Vol. 1. Image Comics, 2021.
 
Anta, Julio, and Jacoby Salcedo. Frontera. HarperAlley, 2023.
 
Chavez, Herman Luis, and María Guadalupe Partida. “A Latinx Resource Guide: Civil Rights Cases and Events in the United States” (1986: Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986), edited by Suzanne Schadl and María Daniela Thurber. Library of Congress, 17 Aug. 2020, https://guides.loc.gov/latinx-civil-rights/irca. Accessed 11 Sept. 2026.
 
Jiménez, Francisco. The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child. University of New Mexico Press, 1997.
 
Jiménez, Francisco, Andrew J. Rostan, and Celia Jacobs. The Circuit: Graphic Novel. Clarion Books and HarperAlley, 2024.
 
Martín, Pedro. Mexikid: A Graphic Memoir. Dial, 2023.
 
Martín, Pedro. Mexikid Dreams: A Graphic Memoir. Dial, 2026.
 
Pimienta, Jose. Halfway to Somewhere. RH Graphic, 2025.
 
Pimienta, Jose. Twin Cities. RH Graphic, 2022.