"Why did you come to the United States? That is the first question in the admission questionnaire for undocumented children crossing the border alone. " From her work as a translator for the defense of migrant children in the immigration court in New York, Valeria Luiselli was able to see firsthand the tangled legal process that literally depends on the future of the thousands of Central American children who risk life To cross the borders of Mexico and the United States in order to escape the daily hell in their respective countries of origin.

The missing child. (An essay in forty questions) is a brutal, intimate testimony written with frank, brilliant and lucid prose, which observes the reality of migrant children from a distance between the desire to remedy the existential helplessness in which they are submerged And the impotence that unleashes the inability to do so. And, as Luiselli himself honestly points out: "How do you explain that it is never inspiration that pushes anyone to tell a story, but rather a combination of rage and clarity?"

Using as a guiding thread the forty questions questionnaire that serves as the basis for the legal process that will determine their situation, Luiselli has gone into the reality of migrant children to show us an x-ray of both their past, present and future lives, as well as the labyrinthine And ruthless immigration system of the United States.