Losing the Most Important Connection
I recently wrote a YCteen story about how difficult it was for me to reconnect with my mother after being separated from her for so long. We’re originally from Colombia and she came to the United States before me, when I was only 5. I was not able to join her until I was 12, […]
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Waiting for the World to Come Back
I came to the U.S. from Guinea in West Africa when I was 17, just last year, to escape abuse by the uncle I lived with. I journeyed by plane to Ecuador, then on buses through Central America and Mexico. I was taken from an ICE detention center near the border to a shelter in […]
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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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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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