Can you remember yourself at fifteen?
Onif Diaz was born in New Jersey, a U.S. citizen. His parents were not. As a teenager, he witnessed his mother being detained by immigration enforcement and later deported to the Dominican Republic. Months later, he was the one translating while two detectives put an ankle monitor on his father. Three days later, his father cut it off and fled to Canada.

Nobody gave him a blueprint for what came next. ICE agents parked outside his house and came pounding on the door in the middle of the night. He had to take out a restraining order against his own brother. His best friend was shot and killed less than two months after graduation. He kept the house in foreclosure going by renting out rooms and getting the lights turned back on himself. Then came Florida, Arizona, back to Jersey, and finally Montreal, always looking for somewhere to land.

A Boy with No Country is an unflinching memoir about raising yourself. Onif tells it through his own stories and the poetry he wrote while he was still living them. It's for anyone who has lost the people who were supposed to guide them, and for the millions of American kids who grow up knowing their family could be split apart at any time.

With love, from the fire.