Halfway to Somewhere

Halfway to Somewhere. By Jose Pimienta. RH Graphic, ISBN 978-0593569429 (softcover), 2025. US$13.99. 256 pages. 

Here's another good book from 2025 that I just got around to reading. I bought it from the author, Jose Pimienta, at the Latino Comics Expo in Long Beach on December 7, 2025.

Halfway to Somewhere is a smartly written, formally elegant middle-grade graphic novel that stakes out now-familiar thematic territory: immigration, displacement, and assimilation pressure as seen through the eyes of a schoolkid whose family is divided both geographically and emotionally. Ave, a middle-schooler from Baja California, moves, most unwillingly, to Lawrence, Kansas, when their mother, a linguistics professor, takes a job at the University there (NB: Ave is nonbinary). While Ave's older sister has stayed behind in Mexico with their father, their younger brother is keen to assimilate into this new life. Gradually, Ave realizes that their parents are divorcing and that living in Kansas is meant to be a permanent thing. Socially reticent, conscious of their tentative English, and feeling very much out of place, Ave resists anglicization and assimilation. They are anxious to hold on to their Spanish, and clash with brother Ray (Ramón), who is only to eager to fit in. 

Ave and Ray respond differently to moving, while color-coded dialogue signals linguistic complexity.

Unsurprisingly, Halfway to Somewhere is about making the best of a tough situation. It follows Ave as they gradually adjust to their new surroundings, make friends, and learn to find things to value in Lawrence. What makes this (for middle-grade fiction) fairly predictable arc interesting is, first of all, Pimienta's patient honoring of Ave's feelings and choices, and, second, the novel's attention to language. That Ave's mother is a linguist is no accident; Pimienta carefully attends to the pragmatic nuances of speech. Color-coded dialogue subtly suggests code-switching, varying levels of fluency and comfort, and moments of linguistic resistance. Dialogue exchanges are socially complex. 

What's more, while Halfway to Somewhere is formally traditional, it is also dynamic and ingenious. Pimienta paces the action mainly through offset grids, rhetorically adjusting the layouts to context, with occasional widescreen or unbordered panels to show meaningful action or immersion in environment. He uses nine-panel grids sparingly, sometimes with split panels, to evoke haste, impatience, or process. The book begins with a lovely wordless sequence depicting a desert hike (to La Casa de Piedra, in La Rumorosa) fondly remembered by Ave as a bonding time for their family. Memories of that hike, and Ave's gradual realization that each member of their family remembers it differently, punctuate the story. At times, Pimienta simply puts past (the family hike) and present (Ave's struggle to adjust) side by side, so that readers have to negotiate uncued transitions. In this way, Pimienta trusts his readers to do interpretive work. 

Hiking is a leitmotif, as is the juxtaposition of past and present.

Ave is a hiker and a runner, someone who likes to discover their world on foot, and Pimienta uses this quality to introduce both Ave and readers to new vistas and experiences. The plot entails a lot of walking around. Indeed, Ave's thirst for discovery and ignorance of risk sometime rub their protective mom the wrong way. This makes for some of the most fraught passages in the book (as mother and daughter argue over what's best) as well as some of Pimienta's sharpest formal moves. Ave really gets around, and so does the comic. 

In all, Halfway to Somewhere ​is an artful, disarmingly sophisticated novel. Its conclusion, affirming  yet ambiguous, refuses easy answers but lets us know that Ave will thrive. Pimienta shows that different family members may adjust to cultural displacement differently -- for example, siblings may have divergent attitudes toward assimilation -- and that's okay. Above all, his awareness of language as both social divider and bridge brings a sensitivity that sets the book apart. While Halfway to Somewhere clearly has didactic elements, it's not preachy and it's not pat. I dig.