As Alejandra sits in the doorway of her dimly lit home in Mexico she focuses on two things, the conversation that her older family members are having in the tortilla that she is eating with great care and consideration. She is listening to them contemplate what will be the next step of her life, being the person designated to make the trip to America. For her this was a gift. It was something that she feared but recognized that if her family believed in her enough to make her the chosen 1 then with pride, she would accept the challenge. As she prepared for her trip she shares how she grew up in Mexico and the relationship, the very close relationship she has with her family. What we soon realize is that when people come to America seeking citizenship or asylum, that mini are not coming with negative intentions but rather with the hopes of a better life. Alejandra and her family want nothing more than to be able to come to America and work and live and thrive. This is a coming of age story that allows a young woman to step into the shoes that would not normally be hers so that she can make life better for herself and all of the people that she loves who are depending on her period it is definitely a heavyweight for her to carry but in her backpack she finds the space to hold all of it including her love and her desperation for a better life as she heads towards America.
Tortillas and Love
One backpack. One single black backpack that I had been carrying since I was in the 7th grade, that's all I had, that's all my family could afford to give me. Imagine, at the age of 18 having just graduated from high school my family gathered me in the living room and gave me one single task, “Alejandra you have to make it to America.” I had heard the stories all my life. I was the little girl that would sit on the floor in the doorway of our small house, eating a tortilla secretly listening to my abuela, abuelo, dos tías y tres tíos always having meetings about the next generation. My generation. Unfortunately, all of my cousins were girls. That's not to say that we were ever discounted or thought of as weak, quite the contrary. It was really a matter of who was going to be tasked with this job and would they be able to do it on their own? My parents never knew I was listening. They never knew that I sat there slowly pulling away pieces of the tortilla eating it at my own pace to make it last longer, to make me feel like I was fuller so that in the candlelight of midnight I could learn everything that I needed to learn and hear all of the conversations that the adults didn't want us to hear. Having now lived my life I don't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing but what I appreciated, more than anything that my family will ever know is that what I heard them whisper about in the dark that's exactly what they told me come light.