From the Bronx to Brandeis
My grandparents, my mother, and my four uncles moved to the United States in 1995. They left behind their home in the Dominican Republic with the dream that an American education could take you anywhere. My grandfather could only attend elementary school in the DR, and he wanted more for his children and their children. […]
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Mami, What’s ‘Deported’?
The day I realized my parents weren’t safe in America, I was 10 years old and at the park with my family on a hot summer Sunday. My cousins and I were running around, spraying each other with water guns. My mom and aunts were cooking hot dogs and hamburgers while my dad and uncles […]
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Becoming Americans Together
I grew up in El Salvador in a small town in the countryside. There are only about 100 families there; I knew everybody and everybody knew me. The streets are dirt and turn into a river when it rains. There are brick and tile houses and corn fields everywhere. Trees, rivers, and the surrounding mountains […]
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Leaving El Salvador Forever
Names have been changed. When I saw my grandma answer the phone, I knew it was the smugglers calling. My family had paid some smugglers—which everyone calls coyotes—to take me from El Salvador through Guatemala and Mexico and across the border to Texas. From there, I would travel to New York, where I would join […]
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