What is my project? A short story about a family’s crossing of the U.S.-Mexican border in order to reunite with the father and to start living a life away from widespread corruption, dangerous cartel activity in their home, and the poverty that befell them on their family farm. The narrator, Sofia, was only a child when they left Mexico, and is now an undocumented immigrant living in the US. She goes to school as a high school senior, and works at a job after school everyday. Sofia looks back on her memories in Mexico, and of her elder sister Guadalupe, whom was lost after they crossed the border. Despite having successfully crossed the border, Sofia feels that she has been trapped in a place with no real opportunities. Since she is undocumented, she cannot apply to many universities and colleges, and cannot apply for their scholarships. Her family is saving money, but even that isn’t enough. People are being snatched off the streets and deported from the country, so now she lives in fear of suffering the same fate. She lost her sister and left her behind at the border where she lay trapped and injured, and was then lost to the unknown. As a result, Sofia is left wondering if leaving Mexico was worth it after all.
What is my inspiration? While doing research for the project, one of the first articles that really caught my eye was a NY Times article titled, ‘Migrant Woman Is Impaled After Trying to Scale U.S.-Mexico Border Wall’, and while reading the article I felt this sense of distaste. A woman from Guatemala was trying to cross into America with two young children accompanying her when she fell and got impaled in her leg and buttock. The border police found her and took her to a hospital to be treated before deportation, but the children who were with her were detained in a location that the Department of Homeland Security refused to reveal. The way the police spoke of her, her actions being ‘foolish’, really rubbed me the wrong way. It was a dismissal of the fact that she had no other choice but to cross illegally. I continued to read other articles similar in nature, but I kept thinking back to the one about her and her children. This article was the main inspiration for my story, along with the Time article ‘Life of a Dreamer’, which is an undocumented student’s account of her life as she prepares to find opportunities in America despite being undocumented.
Contemporary American Dreams & Nightmares 