My family emigrated from Perú to the United States in 1998, when I was six years old. The United States was a land where our dreams could come true; where we could walk the streets without fear of being robbed, assaulted, or worse, where there was plentiful opportunity for economic security, and where my siblings and I could receive a superior college education and improve our standard of living. I grew up in the states; it has been my home for the majority of my life.
For eleven years, we lived in visa limbo. We kept renewing our visas year after year, pouring thousands of dollars, tears, and sacrifices into lawyers and documents that we hoped would allow us to live in peace. Worse than in our own home without fear of being found out, of being deported back to Perú. I had never truly entertained the thought that possibility; Perú was a land that was as foreign to me as the moon.
I rejected my Peruvian heritage, associating it and my immigrant identity with failure, inferiority, and uncleanliness. I thought that if I rejected my Latina-ness, acted “white,” and adopted the American culture, I could convince everyone that I was good, smart, and worthy of living in the states. I remember wishing I could wake up with the brown washed off my skin, that I had an American-sounding name, that my parents no longer spoke English with an accent, and that we could drive, work, and leave the house without fear. I was ashamed that my parents worked as maintenance and domestic workers, and that we never had very much money because of all of the money we had to invest in our paperwork.
When my parents told me that despite their best efforts, we hadn’t been able to obtain our visas, I felt my blood freeze. We sat at our dining room table, and I cried. I refused to fully accept what they were telling me. It seemed impossible. I could not believe how this could be true, when I had always worked so hard; I was devoted to my passion for learning. Education was-is-so incredibly important to me. I felt alone, because none of my friends understood or shared my experience. I felt that I was not good enough, not “American” enough to be able to pursue my dreams.
Luckily, our visas were approved just in time to apply and be accepted to college. I attended Emerson College, where I recently graduated with a degree in Theatre Studies. I learned so much in my four years in Boston, and am so thankful to everyone who helped me get here.
One of the most formative experiences I had in college was a trip to El Paso, Texas through our Alternative Spring Break program, where I studied immigration at the border. I met many people and heard their incredibly moving immigration stories, and I suddenly realized that I was not alone. My trip to El Paso helped me put my story and my experience into perspective; I started to feel ashamed for feeling ashamed. By rejecting my Latina, immigrant identity, I had been diminishing the value of immigrants everywhere. I felt ashamed, for I could not think of anyone who deserves respect and love more than do those who display strength and courage in the face of danger, violence, and hatred on their immigrant journeys, who are determined enough to leave behind everything they know and love for the prospect of a better life. I decided then that I did not want to continue to be part of the problem; I wanted to stop perpetuating shame and stigma and prejudice. I wanted to celebrate and defend the immigrant, myself.
During my last year at Emerson, I joined Students for Rhetorical Mobility, an english class with undergraduates and maintenance workers where all are students and all are teachers. I have to admit, I learned much more than I taught. Our class wrapped a van with our stories and literally drove our narratives to a writing conference nearly 2,000 miles from Boston to Indianapolis (http://proyectocarritoblog.mobility17.com), where one of our student/teachers, Mario Ernesto, presented his writing to an audience of academics and professionals in the field of Writing Studies. Mario Ernesto, a maintenance worker at Emerson and a Boston hospital, worked hard on his composition, a narrative of his story of migration, hard work, and perseverance, and a call to action for the world to embrace the immigrant for the good of the whole. He reminds me very much of my own parents, who worked tirelessly for our family. I can imagine that it was not easy to raise a family as an immigrant in a foreign country. I am incredibly proud of my family, and of Mario Ernesto, who is taking his story one step further by using it to encourage change.
It was incredibly cathartic to hear Mario Ernesto’s speech in our first class with the Proyecto Boston-Medellín artists last week. His words sparked a wonderful discussion about migration, home, belonging, and acceptance. It was painful to hear, for it brought back feelings of shame and inferiority, but more than anything, it was beautiful. It was beautiful because Mario Ernesto, who I think is representing many of us who have ever felt inferior, achieved what I think is one of the most valuable things in the world: he connected people together. He spoke of “convivencia,” what he describes as “when different people learn how to live together, like for example, we have discovered that it is possible to have a real friendship between students and workers, regardless of nationalities and cultures.” I saw his words realized, transcending time and space to resonate in a translingual, transcultural classroom. They fit in perfectly with the work of the artists and our own as we try to identify, examine, and break down borders.
I felt inspired yet again by Mario Ernesto. I hope that my actions, like his, promote convivencia.
Chrislyn Choo
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| To my left is the wonderful artist that Miurel, Elena, and I are working with in this taller! |
Fast forward two years. I am now a full-fledged university student. Again, I find myself in a classroom with local university students. Yet this time, my role is much more organic. My service will be completely tailored to whatever the art students need as they prepare their projects for future exhibition in the United States, which translates into a curious mix of spontaneity and ambiguity. Perhaps I’ll draw on my English teaching to help an artist craft a clear project statement for a U.S. audience. Maybe I’ll be able to create a video that spotlights an artist's creative vision and work. I don’t quite know at this point. What is certain is that I want to be receptive to whatever I can do to help, and hopefully my skill set and personality will have something to offer!
During DukeEngage training, President Brodhead (Duke University) said that I might feel as if the community has had a greater impact on me than I have had on them. Like Taiwan, I can already tell that I will grow immensely from my interactions with the students, many of whom are older than me. Age is just a number, but wow! I am very impressed with the insightfulness, lucidity, poise, and passion of the students we are working with. Even at our first session last week, they spoke with so much wisdom, and they appeared to have absolutely no qualms about voicing their questions and thoughts. I tend to be very self-conscious about my participation in class discussions, so it is both inspiring (and slightly intimidating, but in a good way) for me to share that space with people who can comfortably articulate their ideas publicly. Tam describes our interface as a “conversation between youth", so I anticipate our interactions will continue to teach me to trust in my Big Beautiful Brain.
If there is a specific idea that has stuck out to me so far from our group discussions, it is the idea of stories crossing borders. They can traverse physical demarcations, such as the U.S. state lines that the narrative-covered van of Proyecto Carrito crossed. They can transcend walls in culture and language, as we help the Colombian artists prepare to share their deeply personal experiences with audiences that see the world through different eyes. Knowing my own insecurities about sharing my thoughts out loud, I can only imagine the nervous excitement the students may feel at the prospect of exhibiting their work to strangers in another country. Yet one of the most beautiful strengths of art is its accessibility. Your work can be displayed for others to taste through sight, touch, and sound. The amount of knowledge required for a work of art to be impactful is minimal since people can identify with the commonalities of human experience. The public will color your work with their perceptions, and it will be real to them too because they can use it to understand their own life or yours. Art is a powerful form of communication, and I’ve never been surrounded with this many people before who completely understand and appreciate its influence on the narratives that are told every day. Be it new friendships, worldviews, or self-discoveries, I am very excited to see the fruits of our conversation!
Elena Elliott
We have now been in Medellin for five weeks, and in that time, we have spoken to a lot of people and heard so many of their stories. I have found that, for the most part, people here are very eager to talk about their past and where they come from. For me, that hasn’t always been the case. In the United States it can sometimes be difficult to be a minority and also be of mixed races. You don’t know if you should be proud of being an American or if you should be more proud of your other heritage. I’ve struggled a lot with this identity crisis in the past, but, being here in a country where people are so proud of who they are and where they come from, I feel my self re-confronting this issue.
If I haven’t made it clear yet, I am a child of mixed origins. Because of my father (and my birth place) I am American (estadounidense), but because of my mother I am Mexican. Growing up, I wanted nothing more than to be white. Because of my pale skin and light eyes I was able to get away with it, and, for a while, I did because of my shame in my family and who I was. I eventually grew out of that and wanted to be seen only as a hispanic. For a while I even wished my skin wasn’t so pale so that I could identify with my Mexican side. However, I’ve come to learn a major lesson these last weeks from the people in Medellin. It doesn’t matter if I have colored eyes or if my skin is light. It doesn’t matter what I look like or what language I choose to speak because the blood of my ancestors, both American and Mexican, runs through my veins. It is who I am and I can’t ever change that. I am a Mexican-American. I am a child of two cultures, and I am proud of that.
Ishani Purohit
Looking back on my life in America, I can comfortably say I am also constantly surrounded by a diverse group. But the “melting pot”, as we call it in America, is divided into categories defined by thick cultural and linguistic boundaries. We are a nation of immigrants, so in theory, we all belong. In practice, not all of us do.
Each minority group in America carries with it its own cultural traits, linguistic varieties, and history of oppression that is just different enough from the other minority groups to build walls between us all. And members of each minority group have the tendency to stand on one side of that wall; to self-segregate, because it’s easier that way. And if you don’t identify with one group or the other, you will be forced on one of those sides anyway.
My personal history navigating this wall has affected every decision I’ve made in life, every path I have chosen to take, the people I surround myself with, my own fears and anxieties. My entire identity, my entire existence, begins with this wall. It’s funny, sitting here, thinking about how I’ve spent the summer searching for untold stories in a foreign place, only to realize that the one of my people in my own country remains, to this day, very untold.
It’s the story of my religious symbols, which have been either reappropriated by the Nazis or reduced to cute tattoos on a skinny white girl’s back. It's the story of my name, which over the years I’ve learned to recognize as a long pause from the professor while taking attendance. It’s the story of my actions that are often chalked up to a product of my race. It’s learning that I either have to adopt the title of good little Indian girl or take action to distance myself from my culture. There is no comfortable in-between.
My color, my religion, and my family should not invalidate my belonging to the United States of America. But the reality is, they do. Indians are often referred to as the "model minority", meaning we have no visible, tangible history of oppression in this country. We tend to be middle to upper class. This means we must be complacent, because we haven’t suffered enough injustice to call the world out on it. So we silently shed the things that make us stand out as uniquely foreign. We leave “culture" for the home and adopt “Americanness” for everything else. We learn to soldier on. But we are still Other; we can’t scrub off the one thing that makes us stick out: brown.
I can’t help but feel jealous of Colombians and the amount of pride they have for their country. It’s such a beautiful thing, to love yourself and to love your land, but for some of us it’s hard to do. To be clear, I do not wish to criticize my life in America. I am extremely grateful for everything in my life and I would not ask for it to be any other way. I only wish that I didn’t carry the mountain of shame that I have accumulated over the years of my brown skin, my strange food, my strange Gods. But in the taller we are reminded something constantly that we don’t usually get in a classroom (or in life): aquí no hay vergüenza. Here there is no shame. I don’t want to be ashamed of my beautiful mocha color. I don’t want to be ashamed of the love that I feel from my religious community. I don’t want to be ashamed of my family. I’m not going to hold myself to this mythic standard of “Americanness” that I feel pressured to be because I am so visibly different from the stereotypical American. I am an Indian-American. I am equally one as I am the other, and I’m not letting anyone take that away from me.
Miurel Price
My first impression of our class at the university was that it was beyond my expectations. I thought I would struggle with academic words that I did not know. I expected us all to shy away from speaking up in the classroom because of our unfamiliarity with the classroom setting in Spanish. When I entered the classroom I made it a point not to sit by people from our original American group. Although I was a bit unsure about how relationships would form, I was excited to find out that the students wanted to meet me just as much as I wanted to get to know them. Not long after, we made plans to spend time together outside the classroom. As class began and we watched a video about “Proyecto Carrito,” I could not help but feel like the video represented me. This was an interesting thought for me because I have never before felt, or thought possible, a video was made by me for the world to see. Let me explain. The video talked about Latinos in the United States and the lifestyle and sentiments that come with it. The main character talked about power struggles and submissive conduct that comes with entering U.S. territory. All I could think about as the main character told his story was my mom because she has revealed similar feelings. My mom came to the U.S. from Panama during high school. She did not know English, nor did she understand the culture. She was often made fun of because of the clothes she wore. She was bullied for her accent, and oftentimes had to be strong and stand up for her younger siblings who were 4 years younger than her. Teachers did not think she was capable of taking rigorous courses, even though she maintained A’s and B’s in all of her classes. My mom worked as part of the custodial staff at Rose’s department store for her first job and she has told me how it feels to be underappreciated for your work. Whatever my mom does, she likes to do her best, no matter if it is considered socially unimportant or if she is the CEO of a company. She has always instilled in me to be proud of whatever I accomplish, no matter how people perceive its worth. Watching the video made me proud that the main character had a voice in telling the world his story. As a minority there is always a feeling of inferiority that is hard to shake with the deeply instilled perceptions of us in our nation. Sometimes I feel that it is so deep in our being that many Americans may not even recognize that they may perpetuate and communicate these perceptions, which are usually subtle. That is why this video touched me so deeply. It gave my mom and my family a voice. It gave me a voice and communicated what I do not so eloquently communicate. I hope that I am not giving a sense of a “us” versus “them” sentiment because I wholeheartedly feel that although many people have lived various lives, we are all connected by the simple fact that we are all humans who experience the same emotions, even though they may be brought on by various situations.
Nathaniel Sizemore
Rehka Korlipara
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This picture was taken when Nanamma (right)
was about five years old, and her mother (left) was
about 27. I believe it was taken either by the Indian
government or a newspaper as part of a series of
pictures of Freedom Fighters, to be kept in the
National Archives.
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The British ruled in India for about 200 years, first through the East India Company, and then directly by the Crown. In 1857, there was a military revolt led by the Queen of Jhansi, which was a kingdom in North India. (My great grandparents named my Nanamma (grandmother) Jhansi Lakshmi after the Queen of Jhansi, because they believed in and were active in the independence movement.) The British eventually put down the revolt, and that was when they transferred their rule from a private company to the Crown (that is, the British government)—but in whole, they ruled for about 200 years.
In 1915, Mahatma Gandhi began to organize the masses to overcome this rule. Gandhi had many goals; he strove to achieve religious tolerance, increased rights for women, and the end of the caste system. Perhaps his greatest goal, however, was to achieve swaraj, or self-rule. By way of his own civil disobedience method, Gandhi led various groups of Indians in nonviolent protests. Among these were marches—perhaps the most famous one was the Salt Satyagraha (otherwise known as the Salt March, although satyagraha means “fighting for truth,” not march), which was a protest against the British government’s salt tax. At the time, no one was allowed to make or collect salt without paying a tax, which in whole funded about 8% of the British budget. Everyone needs salt, especially in hot climates such as that of India; the poorer population was hit particularly hard by this tax because they could not survive without salt, but also could not afford to pay the tax. Therefore, Gandhi used it to mobilize the masses as a part of his campaign for independence.
My great grandfather was arrested for participating in the Salt Satyagraha. After he was sent to prison, some freedom fighters came to his (and my great grandmother and Nanamma’s) house to hide. My great grandmother gave them food and shelter. For this, she was arrested. Because she was still nursing, Nanamma was taken to jail with her mother. They remained there for a few months, after which the jail officials offered to release them if my great grandmother admitted to having had helped the freedom fighters (who, by the way, were Gandhi’s disciples, so they were non-violent). But she said that she had done nothing wrong, and refused to apologize. At this point, Nanamma was a little bit older—she was still an infant, but she was old enough that her relatives brought her out of the jail and took care of her. Meanwhile, her mother was sent to a prison for another couple of years. Her parents were in different prisons, her father in Bengal in the northeast, and mother near Madras in the south.
During the next two years, both her mother and father returned. In the meantime, however, the British vandalized their home and took various items such as furniture, as well as doors and windows made of valuable teak wood. They did this because they could not find valuables (grain, gold ornaments, etc.) because my great grandparents had hidden them away before arrest. In the words of my father, while my great grandparents were in prison, “farm animals wandered into their house because there were no doors, made it their own, and had a ball for a long time until the relatives came and took them out. I imagine it was a real Animal House.” When the doors, windows, and other belongings were being auctioned, Nanamma’s uncle found out and bought them back. Her mother and father reinstalled them after returning from prison.
Several years after gaining independence, the Indian government instituted a program of pension and other benefits (free rail passage, etc.) for people who had fought for freedom. Both of Nanamma’s parents were recognized as Freedom Fighters and were given those pensions and benefits. Nanamma, too, would have been recognized as a Freedom Fighter and given a pension and benefits, but to protect her from having a police record, the well-intentioned jail officials had not included her name on the jail roster.
Because of all of this, I have always been incredibly inspired by my great grandparents (even though I was not lucky enough to meet them). They stood up for themselves, their people, and their rights, but in a peaceful way. Although I admire them a great deal for what they did, their actions always just constituted a story for me. A few days ago, though, I told Luisa, a Proyecto Boston-Medellín (PBM) artist from last year, that my great grandparents were Freedom Fighters and about what they did. Her first response, as if she hadn’t even really needed to think to come up with the idea, was that I should share their story through art. The thought had never occurred to me before, especially because I have neither lived in India nor met my great grandparents. I find the PBM artists inspiring because they can absorb and feel the problems and situations that exist in their communities, even those that do not intimately affect them. They can turn other people’s experiences, which affect them peripherally, into a message to share with the world. In the same way that Tania can spread a message of unity through her videos of various racial and ethnic groups at the dinner table, and Cristina can spread a message about maintaining one’s identity despite gang presence, I can spread a message of strength, solidarity, and allegiance through the story of my great grandparents.
Sandy Ren
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| Universidad Nacional, hi-res |
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| Diversity in our Taller, hi-res |
