by Jennifer Patino–

While in detention at Butler County Jail in Ohio, Yanelli Hernandez attempted suicide twice.

Instead of being released while her case was pending, she was detained for nine grueling months, which kept her from receiving the comprehensive treatment and family support that she so desperately needed.

Joaquin Luna, a student who would have benefited if the DREAM Act was passed, took his own life last November. Hernandez’s situation, similar to that of Luna’s,  sparked an outcry from immigrant rights activists who launched a campaign on her behalf.

They even started a campaign to reach out to undocumented immigrants who are facing mental health challenges.

“For ten years we have been forced to wait for the Dream Act, and as a result, we have lost many Dream Act students to suicide,” Mohammad Abdollahi, a co-founder of DreamActivist.org said in a message to supporters.

Despite four thousand telephone calls to ICE Director John Morton and seven thousand signatures on a petition asking that she be allowed to remain with her family, Yanelli Hernandez is now alone in Mexico.

While the Obama administration is working on reducing the wait time for families separated while applying for residency by a harsh ten-year penalty for immigration violations, this does nothing to help those who don’t already have a path to citizenship.

It does even less to address the medical needs of those in detention who, like Hernandez, are not free to seek help from their doctors and families when they need it most.

Meanwhile, Republican candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, hoping to woo the Latino vote before the Florida primary, expressed support for a stripped version of the DREAM Act that restricts the path to citizenship to those who join the armed forces.

Aside from being completely unnecessary since military service is already a path to citizenship, this militarized DREAM Act could send a dangerous message to at-risk immigrants that they won’t matter until they’ve put themselves in harm’s way.

For a decade now, the DREAM Act has been used as a tool to galvanize the Latino voting block. One begins to wonder whether there is anything that could take its place as a campaign issue if the legislation were to ever pass.

For far too long now, we’ve been talking about the big dreams that these bright young men and women have for their future and how we could benefit from them as a country. But that’s all we’ve done—talk. Especially around election time.

And what does Yanelli Hernandez dream of now?

“I hope that one day I’ll be able to be with all of you again,” she wrote to her mother while awaiting deportation.

Politicians can’t keep using these young people’s fragile hopes as campaign strategies without having it exact a terrible toll.

After Hernandez was deported, the National Immigrant Youth Alliance created Undocuhealth.org to help immigrants like her who, disheartened by their challenges, have contemplated taking drastic action.

Stories like those of Joaquin Luna and Yanelli Hernandez show that the time for talking, dreaming, and talking about dreaming is definitely over.

What we need is for both parties to come together and enact comprehensive immigration reform to help those who are struggling—both in our detention centers and in the shadows.

Maria Pesqueira

As an immigrant brought to this country at a young age myself, I can relate to the stories of young men and women who desire better opportunities for themselves and for this country.

I can remember being brought to this country from Guanajuato, Mexico, at the age of six, leaving behind the only home I had known and not knowing what my future would hold. My parents, like many immigrants, came to the United States for a better future.  Knowing that both of them would have to work, they left me in Mexico, in the care of my aunt.

After they settled in the United States, they brought me to live with them in Summit, Ill.

At age six now being in Illinois, I rapidly learned English.  While I still have fond memories of my aunt who helped raise me, I quickly adjusted to my new home and adopted country.  Looking back, I was no different than the courageous young men and women who have stepped forward for a better future.  I am living proof of the benefits that the DREAM Act would bring the next generation of “Dreamers.”

The DREAM Act is a bipartisan bill that would provide a path to citizenship for youth who graduate from U.S. high schools, stay out of trouble, arrived to the United States before the age of 16, and complete at least two years of college or serve in the armed forces.  Every year, 65,000 students graduate from a U.S. high school without the realistic possibility of following their dreams.  These students grew up here and want to contribute to this country.

After having passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Dec. 8, the bill now moves onto a vote in the Senate, scheduled for Saturday.

My organization supports the DREAM Act because Latinas have the lowest level of formal education among women of all racial groups.  As a result, they face the greatest disadvantage regarding high skilled employment opportunities. Immigrant Latinas have higher unemployment rates, lower education levels, lower average incomes, and are more occupationally concentrated than Latina U.S. citizens.

Being raised and educated in the United States has brought me many opportunities. I graduated from De Paul University.  I own my own home.  I have a career and job I love which has allowed me to giveback to the community.

This bill will come to a final decision soon and we need to think about the many possibilities these students may have to give back to this country, if given the genuine opportunity. If we cannot support this legislative bill we are doing a disservice to an entire generation. The generation that can perhaps find the cure to cancer, bring this country to economic stability and set the example for future generations.

It is my hope that the Senate see that it is more than just a bill but a pathway that will allow these students the opportunity to contribute, to strengthen and to empower this nation to move forward. As an immigrant myself, I identify with the students’ anguish and share their hope of the DREAM Act’s passage.

Maria S. Pesqueira is President and CEO of Mujeres Latinas en Accion, a 37-year old community organization whose mission is to empower Latinas and their families through providing services, which reflect their values and culture and advocating on the issues that make a difference in their lives.  An immigrant from Guanajuato, Mexico, she serves as the Vice-President of the Board of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

My sister is the one who told me about the Immigrant Youth Justice League’s DREAM Act “DREAM Deferred, Life Denied” vigil taking place on Dec. 7, 2010 at Federal Plaza. It’s a long and complicated family story, but I was born in Chicago whereas she was born in Celaya, Mexico. I am a citizen of the U.S. and she is not.  We are both waiting for an opportunity for her to be able to adjust her status, which would ideally arrive in the form of the DREAM Act. When there are pro-immigration reform rallies, demonstrations and marches, we are usually there side by side.

She had been planning on attending the rally and had asked me to go with her. The night before the rally, she began making excuses, however. That she heard it would be too cold to be outside, she didn’t want to stand out in the cold for that long. I got frustrated. How could the weather matter at all? It was a chance to show our support of the DREAM Act! I would get all kinds of savage and bloody for her to have a chance at the kind of life she deserves. A little cold was nothing. She said she’d see in the morning about going.

Another reason for my frustration with her is that I find her constantly making excuses for why she can’t do things. I encourage her to volunteer with various groups and she plans on it, but at the last minute her plans fall apart.

And that’s what happened in the morning. I sat down on her bed and shook her awake. “C’mon, time to get ready to go.” “Ugh, get out of here,” she said. “I didn’t fall asleep until 6.” I was furious with her.  She knew we had the rally to go to at noon! I slammed the door to her room and called her lazy. I went off to the rally on my own with a camera and notebook, planning on interviewing the members of the Immigrant Youth Justice League.

When the rally began, members of the league dressed in blue graduation robes laid down on the cold cement outside of the Federal Plaza. They were symbolically honoring the DREAMers who had died before the passage of the act as well as those who had taken their own lives out of the sense of hopelessness their situation had created for them. Pictures of three of those dreamers hung behind the speakers.

The point of the rally was to bring awareness to the impact immigration status has on these promising and bright young people. As soon as the first speaker took the microphone I was reduced to a stream of tears. There was no way I could pretend to be a journalist of any kind in this situation. It was too close to my heart. The first speaker read a note from a friend of Benjamin Pintor, who had committed suicide on Thanksgiving because he “never felt he had a true home.”

All I could do was cry. I flashed back to all my sister’s excuses, how difficult it must be to for her to motivate herself on a daily basis. I remembered all those times my sister had made comments like “What’s the point? I should just throw myself in front of a bus.” At the time I tried to comfort her, tell her not to talk like that. That there’s always a point. I imagined her words as a small eruption of defeatism and that she just need someone to cheer her up. Listening to members of the Immigrant Youth Justice League bare their wounds and talk about their struggle to stay alive made me realize how much deeper and more dangerous this struggle is for them—and for my sister.

One girl told us about how she tried to commit suicide a day after her high school graduation. “That’s when a funeral started to look less expensive than four years at the school of my choice,” she told us. Had my sister ever had that same thought?  Another speaker told us about the scars on her arms. How she couldn’t sleep at night.

I was an asshole for having called my sister lazy that morning. Nervous about the rally, about the upcoming vote on the DREAM Act, she probably hadn’t been able to sleep either. Within the fight for the DREAM Act, there is another battle going on within each DREAMer. They are fighting to overcome the sense of worthlessness terms like “undocumented” and “illegal” bury in their spirits. They are fighting their own inner demons to stay alive.

It takes a lot of courage to admit their struggle and I am grateful to the members of the Immigrant Youth Justice League for coming forward to pierce the sense of isolation that depression creates.  I’ve struggled with major clinical depression for ten years now myself. I can’t imagine having your family unwelcome in the country of your birth does wonders for your self-esteem. But unlike me, status-less immigrants like my sister are also dealing with the frustration of feeling that strangers in Washington get to decide what DREAMers get to do with their lives. Until attending the vigil, I didn’t realize how many layers this problem has.

I say this to her and to anyone else out there reading this and facing depression: “I know that there is a voice inside your head that tells you not to fight anymore at the slightest sign of defeat. And you have felt defeated before. But that voice is a liar. Depression distorts reality in the worst way and makes you imagine that there is no reason to hope. But please hang on, for clarity’s sake. Don’t let depression keep you from seeing all of your options. Please hang on. Together, we’ll find a way.”

Still, I wish my sister could have been with me at the vigil. I made sure to take lots of pictures for her. She has her good days and she has her bad ones. I’m just thankful that she’s in my life and that if she missed the rally it was to catch up on sleep and not because she had lost that inner battle. After years of being debilitated by depression, my sister recently enrolled at Harold Washington where she is taking her general education credits. I’m proud of her for taking that first step out of the darkness.

And I am proud of my country for doing the same in passing the DREAM Act in the House of Representatives. Now it is the Senate’s turn to do the same. So many lives are stalled and depending on it.

Like the bullied gay youth in our country, DREAMers are trying to build a sense of self worth in a society that is legally and culturally hostile to them. It helps to know that they are not alone. The message depressed gay teens received through caring videos on YouTube is that “It gets better.”  With status-less immigrant teens, it is our responsibility to MAKE it better. Call your senators. Put pressure on them to pass the Dream Act in the senate. If possible, donate to organizations like the IYJL.  And if you or someone is facing suicidal thoughts, get help. You can contact members of the IYJL and their social workers at http://www.iyjl.org/.

Jenny Patiño is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago.

By Carolina Rivera–

I like the brick wall my dad built. The other walls are made of corrugated metal, like my friend Cande’s house; although mine is shiny and new, while hers is rusty and decaying with holes.

My little brother yells to Cande from the street, “ your house is a colander,” as she hurls the first stone she finds on her patio that are always filled with dry fallen coffee tree leaves; her house is inside a coffee grove and mine is on the edge of a gully.

I defend Cande and invite her in the afternoon to touch the brick wall, and we play tic-tac-toe on it.

One night Dad tells us he built the brick wall from bricks left over from the last mansion he had finished in the Escalón neighborhood.

People from my neighborhood, my girlfriends, my sisters and brothers are jealous because I love my wall. They tell me that I nurture the wall like I do my baby sister, the bay of the house. I give my baby sister kisses on her little face and comb her fine hair.

Before Christmas arrives, my brothers, sisters and I remove everything from the wall to paint it. My sister and I are the oldest ones, so we give orders to the little ones.

My older brothers don’t want to paint the wall with us because they say it is a game for kids, and not for them. They leave the house wearing their bell pants and long hair that covers their face; the oldest takes his guitar.

When I go out to see where they are going, they have already joined their friends who are parked on one corner of the street.

Nevertheless, today they mixed the whitewash for us before they went to work with Dad.

They mixed the whitewash in a barrel they cut to our size to reach the wall. The oldest, Juan, drew a blue window with clouds that look like a mice and an orange sun on the wall in the outside, and said, “do not even try to paint the wall from the outside.”

On the wall, hangs the most important things of the family. Three days before Christmas, my sister and I took down the gifts we gave to my mother for Mother’s Day: the calendars the lady from the store gave us last Christmas, a poster from El Divino Salvador del Mundo, a fake stone necklace that hangs from an rustic nail and two bough made of soda cork covered with a purple and red terciopelo; mine is a bough of grape, and my sister’s is a strawberry.

When I take them down, I sneeze and  layer of fine dust fades out into the air. My little brother’s gifts are colored pencil drawings inside of a heart-shape construction paper.

My sister is in charge of taking down photographs of my great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mother and father when they were in their twenties, and pictures of my older brothers.

In reality, the photos are pencil sketches drawn by my oldest brother’s friend.

One day his friend visited us and mom gave him some colones and seven oxidized photos. In one month, we had them framed in black and white, even better than the original pictures. We hang them on the wall with all the important things that go on the brick wall.

My little brothers’ shower the wall and after they dry it with pieces of clothes, they find themselves in the house.

My brother Antonio is in charge of taking out the nails from the wall. He likes that job because he can use papá’s hammer, as he hangs it on his belt like Dad.

I always invite Cande to help us paint the wall, and if there is some paint left we paint her corrugated metal walls; although last time we painted it, the whitewash didn’t go well because it dissolved into a color like mom’s old photos. Nevertheless, Cande said it doesn’t matter because the Orin yellow color is better than the soot from the oven.

My sister and I bring the barrel filled with whitewash and the brushes of mescal that look like a horses’ tails, and my little brothers are ready to paint. When the barrel comes, my brothers’ surround them and before they immerge the brushes, we interrupt them.

Their happy faces changed into disappointed faces, as they bend their heads down and place the brushes on the floor. After a brief silence, I explained to them that my sister and I will paint the top part.

“Don’t get too close because if whitewash falls on your face, you will be blind. And if it falls on your skin, you will disappear,” I said, as the seven of them moved away.

Clara accommodates them into a vertical line away from the wall where there are only four paintbrushes. I call Antonio and Javier, the two youngest, and I take Antonio and my sister takes Javier.

“Close your eyes, you have to paint with your senses,” I said to Javier.

Javier takes the paint brush and as he lifts it, whitewash falls on his face. We take him down from the chair fast and to the barrel under the mango tree that is full of water from the last storm. We threw two buckets of water on him and he started screaming.

“ I can’t see, I can’t see, the white wash left me blind,” he said, as we laughed. The others moved far away because they were scared and alarmed from Javier’s screams.

We come back to work and Javier falls sleep; my sister put him to bed and covered his eyes with a piece of cloth.

Clara, Antonio and I finished painting the wall, while my siblings help us with pieces of cloth that they manipulated into sponges; like the one Mom used to feed us when we were babies, my siblings fed the wall.

Mom and Dad arrived home and congratulated us for the work on the wall.

I see the wall wide and I imagine it like the sea. In an instant, it transforms itself into a desert with short pathways. The wall is my bed, I dream there. It transforms into a canoe and takes to the other side of the world. I interweave in the wall and now we both are a blanket that covers the roof while my brothers and sisters sleep.

Mom tells us to go sleep and Papá tells us later that he will paint the wall to even out the white color.

The night divides me between the light that reflects from the wall, and the dull light from the corrugated metal walls.  I imagine the wall is a moon from a fantastic purple Christmas, and if I had another paint color, I would paint it the color of a red afternoon; however, we only have whitewash and my dad can’t afford the purple paint. Nevertheless, I have seen my wall painted like a sunset in my dreams.

Late at night when everyone is knocked out, or dizzy, like my dad says, I get up to see the wall. She doesn’t want to go sleep either, so we illuminate into the silence of the night.

I kneel and contemplate her like she is my saint that makes miracles. I like her eyes and I’m the only one that knows where they are, because I invented her eyes; they are black  and almond-shaped, and her May sunflower eyelashes cover me when I hear the dogs barking.

When the paint is dry, I run my fingers on her and carefully take out the mescal hair that stays on when we were painting.

The hair prints look like skinny drunk serpents that don’t know where are they going; the long prints are veins in its white body.

From far away, I observe the wall and I see it is like the sky of a new year. Christmas always finds the brick wall ready to be dressed with a new piece of jewelry for the yew year.

Carolina Rivera is an educator, writer, performer, and filmmaker. She was born in El Salvador, and lives in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.  Rivera completed her undergraduate degree in English Literature with an emphasis in Creative Writing at University of California in Los Angeles.

Calaveritas de azúcar / Sugar skulls

Calaverita sonriente  / Smileeey skull!! 

Dulces de Leche y de Frutas / Milk and Fruit Candies

Decorating skulls becomes an art! / El decorar las calaveritas se hace todo un arte

Finally…chocolate ones! / Finalmente…las de chocolate

Pictures taken by / Fotografías tomadas por: Andrea Arzaba (Oct 2010)

Andrea Arzaba is a journalist and blogger.  She has written for different publications such as LACVOX, UNICEF’S Latin American Blog, 8-80a Universidad Iberoamericana Newspaper and for the North American publication Dispatches International.  Andrea is studying her BA in Communications at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.  She also has her blog “One Lucky Life.”

This past weekend was the Latino Books and Family Festival at California State University, Los Angeles. I was lucky enough to be invited to speak on a panel at the event entitled “From Inspiration to Publication: The Business of Poetry,” with poets Alicia Partnoy, William Archila, Rafael Alvarado, Erika Ayon and Melinda Palacio. I was honored to be sitting next to such accomplished writers.

In March, I attended a panel at UCLA featuring Alicia Partnoy, author of The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival, about Argentine political prisoners’ writing and art, and I was excited to be able to finally introduce myself. It was also an honor to sit alongside William Archila whose book, The Art of Exile–a poetic account of his exit from civil war El Salvador in 1980 and his later return–won the festival’s International Latino Book Award in Poetry. I bought Archila’s book today at the festival, and am already in love with it. Beautiful images of here and there, and consequently feeling alienated from both feel dreamy and magical. But as William explained at our panel, what we here in the U.S. call “magical realism” is an everyday way of thinking in Latin American countries.

Walking through booths of Latino publishers, bookstores, writers and organizations made me feel lucky to be a Latino writer welcomed by a supportive community. Sometimes being a writer can be lonely. The act of writing is solitary, but what I love about being a poet is the opportunities it brings to share stories and experience a moment of togetherness. On the truest level, this community is hopefully felt when we read a poem about a man’s memory of being a boy in El Salvador or a political prisoner’s story of survival, but it can also happen in public spaces.

It is about community. We share our stories to understand each other and gain a sense of sameness; or as Father Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, author of Tattoos of the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, and the festival’s keynote speaker said, “it is a mutual experience.” A moment in time when we discover a kinship with one another.

In my household there is an ongoing debate about the state of the Latino community in the U.S. Of course, we all know there is still a long way to go, but in my house some think we have focused too much on art, literature, and education and not enough on business and politics. That may be true, but we need Latino writers and poets, books, publishers, bookstores, and community centers if only to have a place to be recognized and seen, because no one else is going to do it unless we make them.

As David Orr said in his essay, “The Politics of Poetry,” (I’m summarizing here and taking liberties) politics and poetry both demand a mastery of rhetoric and politicians are –just as poets– “people who imagine new ways of being and perceiving.” Orr refers to this as a “totalizing vision.” The politician and poet’s ability to imagine a wider worldview allows both to clarify for a public a new or different reality through language. So yes, it would be good for our community to have more Gloria Molinas and Sonia Sotomayers in places of power, but we also need Luis J. Rodriguez, Sandra Cisneros, Gary Soto, Martin Espada, and Julia Alvarez (to name a few).

Support your Latino writers, buy a book, and let’s keep the community moving together.

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is a Los Angeles native and Chicana writer, by whom she and others refer to as part of the Splinter Generation.    She is currently the author of two blogs, The Immigration Project and If I Had a Blog.

“Up, up with education! Down, down with deportation!” chanted a crowd of 30 or so Latin American youths holding hand-painted signs advocating the Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which would grant “restricted” residency to children of immigrants who pursued a higher education or military service.

I watched as students took turns telling their grueling Cinderella stories, each one starting with, “My name is Juan or Maria and I’m undocumented and unafraid,” then stumbling over words, pausing to apologize for being nervous, and continuing to spill forth their love for America. At the end of the rally they ended with the same chant, but the girl with the mic mixed up the words and instead said, “Up, up with deportation! Down, down with edu—I mean, no, up, up with education.” In effect, it just showed how much they really do need a way into college.

But what struck me the most, being Hispanic myself, was the emphasis in each story of the great love they had for this country. If to be in love means you wouldn’t let anything keep you from standing by your lover, and when you’re with them you feel so lucky and special no matter what and you know you’ll be OK as long as you have them…then I see no reason why these devotional, undocumented 65,000 yearly graduates should be torn from their one true love, the USA.

I may not know what it means to have to wade through a river and trek through a hot desert into a foreign land, as Mexican immigrants do; I do know, however, how it feels to fall in love with a new city. When my friend Dave and I first pulled up to the curb in the car, face to face with Columbia College Chicago, I squealed, pounded my feet, and gasped because it was as if at that moment, I heard Chicago ask, “Marry me?”

And I said, “Yes! Yes!” So with Columbia College as the engagement ring, I married Chicago the first day we met. No, we didn’t know much about each other except for an essay and the mutual feeling that we belonged together. Love and excitement left little room for fear, and I was ready to learn and live for me. Exiting the car, we walked the streets of Chicago. Arching my head back looking at those skyscrapers, I began to wonder what really goes on the uppermost floors.

With plenty of rooms for storage and offices, I’d say the top floors–high above the public eye– are reserved for more un-business-like endeavors. How about laser light parties? Spa treatments? After all, they’re living the high life. Or maybe the floors contain more sinister designs; such as meetings for controlling the poor down below, preparing for the apocalypse, and whatever else rich men with ambitions might do in their spare time. I keep these naive thoughts to myself.

Walking along, these buildings embrace me like strong, burly arms and in a godly voice proclaim,” This is speed, this is growth, this is open up wide, swallow the world, choke; make it go down.” I could hear all the noise in Illinois and I felt at home; a sensation I had only one other time a thousand miles away, oddly enough, in a classroom.

I sat down on a smooth boulder in a garden; a patch of green sewn in by streets and glass edifices. “What’s wrong?” I heard Chicago ask. I looked down at my toenails and replied that the future is shakily uncertain and, I must confess, when it comes to relationships, I always fail. Chicago’s humidity is like a big, wet kiss on my skin, reassuring me and saying, “I have enough in me to welcome and care for you.”

I look across the way at a tall, black man at a bus stop pacing with his arms out stretched. “I loooovvveee the way you liiieee,” he moans. Then I notice his headphones. The man grows quiet for a few seconds before bursting into the chorus, as if he were drowning and calling for help. Now when I listen to “Love the Way You Lie,” by Eminem and Rihanna, this guy’s voice will involuntarily yodel into my mind.

I turn away from the man still holding his voice in his arms out to the sun. Would he continue singing on the bus? No one would dare quiet a passionate black man, especially one singing Rihanna.

I continue telling Chicago, but you see I’m not good at math, and relationships are like math equations. For instance: commitment – selfishness + sacrifice + expectations + obligations divided by the fact that I never do what I’m supposed to do equal destruction and frustration, because somehow appealing feelings are erased and replaced with tired disdain. I finish explaining with a sigh.

Car horns beep through the tenseness, feet paddle the sidewalks, the sun finds its way through the trees. Chicago, “What about love and marriage?”

Well, I say, and lift my bottom from the rock and walk away from the small park and get back into the car. If you factor in love that complicates everything, and marriage is a never ending math equation that you constantly have to work on.

Dave and I drive to Chinatown and get out of the car to have a quick walk up and down the street. “We can make this relationship work”, said Chicago. “Know why? Because we’re going to set aside the rules, the tricks, and the noose that comes with being in a relationship.” With this in my mind, Dave and I pass shop windows cluttered with random objects that make you think you could walk out of the store holding a fish, an umbrella, and a porcelain doll.

When I drive back to the campus with Dave, I see a 200-pound woman melting like vanilla ice cream down a fence she’s sitting on. “Are you with me”? The question comes from the space between the buildings and the wind that nibbles on my ear, caresses my cheek. I stand on a street corner feeling as though I am in a wonderland amongst shadow-casting giants, bearded beggars, youthful arrangements, melodramatic and shy stores; faces both strange and familiar. I love it all. “Absolutely,” I say out loud. “What?” Dave asks. “Nothing,” I say. “You sure?” says Dave, “You’ve been talking to yourself all day and smiling all dreamily,” he said. “I’m OK, really,” I say contentedly.

And that is my story of immigrating to Chicago and falling in love. Politicians seem to forget how all Americans are immigrants. They stick to their facts and scare tactics, but have they considered that the number of Hispanics in America is 16 percent and rising? If I were a senator, I could say how there could be negative consequences for unrequited love. In other words, if America is not allowed to love its people in return, nothing would prevent these undocumented Latinos and Latinas from turning to crack-dealing and prostitution. How’s that for a frightening statistic?

Latin Americans are the ones saying they are “unafraid,” despite an uncertain future and low income, so what are the reasons legislatures are afraid to approve the DREAM Act?

We “beaners,” or “wetbacks” as we’re also referred to, work in service industries ranging from road constructionists, janitors and house cleaners—jobs that others refuse to do out of reluctance of getting their fingernails dirty. Nevertheless, these jobs require diligence in their undertaking, giving us a strong work ethic.

We are also said to have invented car pooling; being crunched in a small van with 20 people isn’t a problem, thus proving our capacity to remain composed in tight situations. As for our contribution to the American food platter, if you haven’t eaten a chimichanga, your taste buds are virgins to deliciousness. And who’s to say we aren’t productive citizens? Oh, we know production, and even reproduction for that matter. See, after jumping the border, “beaners” continue to jump at any, and all opportunities.

Point being, there’s no excuse for legislatures to keep hard working, flexible, spicy Mexicans from becoming citizens with equal learning options.

All racial slurs aside, what joins Americans as a nation, lies in our belief of being a have-person or a will-have-person. That means we all live by wishing. I’ve watched the smoke from birthday candles writhe and billow out into the air like the wishes from my breath that propel them. After 19 birthdays, I still haven’t stopped wishing, and I never will. ‘Wishing’ is attached to ‘wanting’ by a string; the wanting pulling the wishing forward, unstoppable to the point of selfishness. I came to Chicago because of a wish that transformed from a flirted whisper in my ear to a fortunate reality.

Red, yellow, black and white people lie in bed and maybe look out a window that opens up to the night sky. When I look out, I pronounce ‘I wish’ and see my lips reach out with the ‘w’ for a star’s blessed kiss. Still, leaders of this country continue their filibusters and recklessly become dream- busters.

Lynndel Noriega grew up in New Mexico where she discovered her love for writing and then moved to Denver, Colorado in eighth grade where she furthered her writing abilities.  She discovered her home in Chicago attending Columbia College.

I was pleased when fellow author, Sarah Rafael Garcia, handed me a copy of “Barrio Writers: The First Edition,” not just because I’m a nerd and books are my only friends but because I was one of the contributors in this project.

Last year, I had the opportunity to speak these kids about writing and my experience of being a newly published author. The kids were so engaged with my words and I held their interest throughout the entire session. I was surprised! I could tell that these kids wanted to learn, which is a rarity considering most kids don’t want to.

At least, that’s been my experience when I was in grade school. I was always the “eager beaver” in the class. I was alwasy the one that reminded the teacher to assign homework for the weekend, and I always reminded them to collect it to. I got countless spit balls thrown at me for that, BTW.

“Why did you do that?” they always said. “Can’t you keep your big mouth shut?”

What can I say? I was a sucker for homework, and I thoroughly enjoyed getting As.

That has been my mentally about kids. They made me feel like the outcast in school because I liked staying home on a Friday night, reading, studying, or doing extra credit. I had to do something on the weekends. After all, I didn’t have any friends. Nobody wanted to be friends with the nerd, the suck up, the teacher’s pet (my most hated nick name, BTW.)

But these kids surprised me. They were actually different than the kids I knew. I could actually see potential in them. I’m sure most of the kids I went to school with are either pregnoids or drop-outs or even jail birds. That’s not the future for the students of Barrio Writers.

Now, I am reading each of their stories in the anthology. Most of them are dramatic stories in which you can tell was a personal revelation in the writer’s life. You can see all the heart and soul poured on by these kids as you read their stories.

I was proud to have been a part of this, and I look forward to the next class in the upcoming year!

Sandra Lopez is an author from Hawaiian Gardens, California who has penned two novels.  Her first novel “Esperanza: A Latina Story” was published in 2008 by Floricanto Press while Lopez was still in college.   Her blog “Sandra’s Book Club” is an extension of her love of literature where she reviews books and shares about her life as a novelist.

Unknown Mami

By “Unknown Mami”–

Reading did not come easily to me. We moved around a lot when I was a child, which means I switched schools a lot. I knew the alphabet, I knew the sounds letters made,and I knew some words by sight, but most words were a jumble of letters that I could not decipher. Somehow I missed the lesson where it was announced that the sounds the letters made could be strung together. I remember the shame of being the tallest kid in first grade and being sent to the kindergarten class for reading. It was embarrassing, but it was a gift because that is where I finally learned to read.

One day, I was sitting in that kindergarten class towering over all the smaller children, we had been given a list of three-letter words. Once we had figured out what each word was, we were to go to the teacher and read it and he would check it off as correct. One of the words was “pig.”

I went up to the teacher and told him the word was “big.”  He said, “No,” and sent me back to try again. Well, I kept going back and insisting that the word was “big.”  Big was one of the words I had memorized and I figured that since “pig” looked so much like “big” that it must be the same and that the teacher was wrong.

The teacher eventually looked at me and said, “No, the word is not big. Sound it out!”

Sound it out?! I had never heard of such a thing. Sound it out! “You mean the letters?”, I asked. He nodded his head and I stood there sounding out “p-i-g” until I said it fast enough that it sounded like a word. That’s the day that a whole new world opened up for me.

There was no stopping me after that. That same school year I went from being sent to the kindergarten class for reading to being sent to the third grade class because I had gotten so good.

Books helped me through so many difficult moments in my childhood. They provided a safe place to escape and explore, to relax and imagine.

These memories resurfaced for me because I was sent the “young adult” book “Amigas: Fifteen Candles” created by Jane Startz, written by Veronica Chambers, and inspired by Jennifer Lopez.

In order to truly “get into” the book I flashed back to my early teen years where I would love to read these sort of light, fun, escapist type books. They were a welcome distraction in a childhood that was not always placid.

“Amigas: Fifteen Candles” is the first in a new series for young adults. Great literature it is not, but it’s not meant to be. As a teenager, I would have enjoyed reading serialized books like “Sweet Valley High” that had Latino characters and mentioned things like quinceañeras.

The book is peppered with Spanish, but you don’t have to know Spanish to understand it. It’s also about Latino characters, but you don’t have to be Latino to enjoy it. I’d say it would be a fun, quick, summer read for a tween or early teen.

Unknown Mami is  a bilingual Latina mother, wife,and actor in my late 30s who lives with her husband and daughter, “Put Pie,” in San Francisco.  She has her own blog entitled “Unknown Mami.“

Thelma Reyna, Ph.D.

She has been precocious for most of her life: reading books at the age of two, being the first in her family to graduate from high school and college, being one of the youngest emerging authors today. She recently received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from California State University, Fullerton and is ready to take on the literary world.

Her first novel was published before Sandra graduated from college. This debut book, “Esperanza: A Latina Story” (2008), depicts a teenager from a poverty-stricken home marked by domestic abuse, alcoholism and other drug abuse, gangland connections among her father and other relatives, and a saddening absence of hope for the future.

Her barrio, Hawaiian Gardens in Los Angeles County, could easily defeat her, as a friend tries to tie her down to early marriage at the cost of her education. When Esperanza enters high school, she faces bullies, peer pressure to meet low expectations, and the tremendous possibility that she, too, will become just another Latina dropout.

Esperanza has no role models, no home support, but she finds strength she did not realize she had and fights against obstacles to fulfill her dreams.

In her new book, a sequel, Esperanza is now 18 years old and enrolled in an art college, pursuing her dreams with financial aid. Her life is upended when friends from her past re-enter: Carlos, who is now interested in her romantically, and his sister, Carla, who had urged Esperanza to marry her brother while in high school.

Esperanza also contends with her roommate, a rich Chicana; and with Jake, a hunky mechanic who seems to be her soul mate. Life becomes complicated for Esperanza as she constantly wonders what is “beyond the gardens” of her barrio, and what life can possibly hold for her.

Thelma Reyna, Ph.D is an author, editor, California University professor and Texas native.  Her first book “The Heavens Weep for Us and Other Stories,” was published in September 2009.  She writes the blog, “American Latina/o Writers Today” which features Latino and Latina writers.  She also is a guest blogger on Aurelia Flores’ blog, “Powerful Latinas.”