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Showing posts from February, 2017

There is no right way

Not every immigrant story starts out the same way. Case in point: "My parents came over on a sponsored visa program, backed fully, and entered the port of NYC with the sun on their backs and a good road ahead. They did it the right way." There is no right way. There's only the way it happened. Some of us arrive in the dead of night on a rocking sea, vomit-covered shirt soaked and stained - the boat of tied-together rafts and tires falling apart as it hits the shore. Others stowaway on big steamers that chug their way towards the assumed golden shores of America, weeks and weeks hiding beneath cargo. Then there are others who strip down to their underwear, their belongings in a single plastic bag, plunging their bodies into the cold waters of that snaking river to rise, shaking yet determined, on the other side.  Before these the many who sought their dreams boarded boats and simply arrived, suitcase in hand. Our ancestors out there dreaming and doing. There were n