Borderlands/La Frontera
When Dreams Aren’t Enough
Zoe: When I was in middle school, my mom told me I should be a lawyer, because I was so great at arguing with her. I didn’t think much of it; lawyers were the sort of people that showed up on my TV when I was flipping through the channels. They were the actors on Law & Order, the people who never looked like me: typically male, sometimes of color, but never Latina. College was the first time I ever walked on a law school’s campus, the first time I met real-life law school students. Nevertheless, the beautiful rooms of the Law School Library only brought newfound anxiety as I realized I had no clue how to get there, how to eventually make it to a courtroom, defending people who deserve to have their rights protected.
El Pueblo Unido
Zoe: Sometimes, I feel lost. It’s as though I’m on this impossible quest attempting to find something that reminds me of home. I’m constantly seeking out the hints of color in the otherwise blinding sea of white, because when the cold sets in and I’m reminded of how far away I am from home, I just want the comfort that comes from those moments of familiarity. I was walking out of a section for my Social Studies class when beautiful, lilting Spanish words immediately transported me to images of the paleta man coming down the street, hardworking brown bodies, and food so spicy that water can never be very far away. I turned the corner and found the source in two of Mather’s Latinx custodial workers joking and laughing with each other. The familiar sounds of rolled r’s and rapid-fire words fell from their lips, providing me with a warmth I fail to find in predominantly white syllabi and classrooms where the moments I find a face that looks like my own are few and far between.
Don't Close the Borderlands
Ruben: Having been born with full legal citizenship, yet denied cultural citizenship, has forced me into a borderland “where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds.” The distinction, American but hyphenated, suspended me between the United States and El Salvador. My ability to cross borders, wielding the blue and gold of my American passport, molded me to my core. I’m the awkward brown boy from a Southern Californian suburb, but I’m also the brown boy with the terrible Spanish accent who tried desperately to fit in on his grandparents’ farm in San Vicente. On my flights home, packed alongside souvenirs, semita, and fresh cheese, I brought a new worldview that understood that the United States’ standard of living is a luxury, and that we aren’t the only country that exists or matters. Up until last week, my worldview, rooted in a transnational understanding of the world, was respected for its biculturalism. But today, I worry about what it means to be an American whose heart partially lives out of this country’s borders.
Whose Harvard?
Zoe: It’s constant reinforcement that my experiences aren’t considered enough. Being a woman of color, being low-income, being first-generation are thought to be the boxes checked on a college application, never to be acknowledged again as impacting my college experience. As if those labels that I live and breathe, that make up my identity, should no longer be considered significant after walking through the gates of Harvard. The University lacks resources that recognize my experience as a low-income student of color as being different from the experience of a white student from a high-income family. This only serves to reinforce that my identity isn’t important enough to be acknowledged outside of the classroom where I’m supposed to be the voice of diversity. I am constantly shown that my worth on this campus comes from my otherness, my unique identity, the brown color of my skin, but when it comes time to address those differences and how they have influenced my needs as a student, they are no longer important.
This Is My Country, Too
Ruben: I woke up on Wednesday and, for the first time in my life, questioned whose America I was living in. A boy who’d said the Pledge of Allegiance every morning of his eighth grade school year over the loudspeaker to the point where it’d become his personal prayer—an incantation to his country—woke up wondering if this was his country any longer. A boy who led the Pledge of Allegiance at his high school graduation questioned his citizenship as his country elected a leader who made it clear that his browness, his biculturalism, and his love of country have no place in Trump’s America.
