Halfway to Somewhere | Review

Halfway to Somewhere
Writer/artist: Jose Pimienta
Random House Graphic; $21.99
Publisher’s age recommendation: Ages 8-12

Ave was perfectly happy with life in Mexico, where the non-binary middle-schooler lived with their family, which also seemed perfectly happy…at least as far as Ave knew. We get a sense of Ave’s happiness in the opening of Halfway to Somewhere, the new graphic novel from Jose Pimienta, the cartoonist responsible for 2020’s Suncatcher and 2022’s Twin Cities.

During these pages, set “Last Spring,” we join Ave’s family on a challenging hike through the desert, where a series of still, silent panels depicts the various, often beautiful sights, culminating in a family dinner, and a panel of the five of them standing together and enjoying the view.

But then in the summer, Ave’s mom moves to the United States for a new job at the University of Kansas, taking Ave and their little brother Ramon with her. Ave’s father and older sister remain in Mexico.

Ave knows their parents are separating, but considers it to be only temporary, and believes that their dad and sister will eventually join them in the U.S….despite the fact that any time Ave says something along those lines to a family member, we get a panel of that family member looking awkwardly to the side and not saying anything (because of this, readers will know this separation isn’t exactly temporary long before Ave will realize it).

That’s just one of the many challenges Ave will face in the coming months.

Ave speaks very poor English and thus doesn’t try very hard to communicate with anyone who doesn’t speak Spanish. (Throughout the book, the dialogue of which is almost exclusively presented to readers in English, Pimienta distinguishes the languages with black lettering denoting Spanish and blue lettering for English.) Meanwhile, their mother and brother adopt quickly, making new friends immediately—Ramon even wants to start going by “Ray.”

Ave also worries about assimilating, not wanting to forsake their Mexican identity, which every act of fitting in—even speaking English—seems to them to be leading towards.

As hard as the adjustment of the move, and the revelation of its permanency, is on Ave, things get far easier when they finally start school, and slowly, even reluctantly, make some new friends, friends who share some things in common with them, like immigrant and/or non-traditional gender identities, or interests in running and comics.

Pimienta’s Halfway to Somewhere isn’t just about Ave’s journey from Mexico to Kansas, then, but their journey to accepting a new home and a new familial status quo and finding a way to be themself in the face of various pressures on their identity.

While the specifics of these conflicts might not be the exact same for all of Pimienta’s readers, they should nevertheless resonate, as they tap into broader feelings that arise with dealing with change and struggling with identity that all kids have to go through as they begin their own journeys from childhood to adulthood.

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