Living in Bogota, Colombia was hard when my grandmother Rosa was little girl; poverty and violence was hitting its climax. In the 1940s, Rosa and her family were living in desperate poverty, and yet she was given this beautiful doll. Rosa worked since she was a young child, she would carry this doll around her job, house, and school. This doll didn’t get a name until my grandma came to the United States for the first time to visit. Later on, my grandma and her family were forced to return to Colombia after they received a death threat from an American officer. I remember my grandma saying his skin was “clear as glass and rising with the color of anger, rojo (red)." He threatened physical force and sent out an alert, and so my family fled to avoid any dangerous altercations. Dealing with this traumatic event, Rosa held onto this doll as she left the life she had grown to know in America. She tried to cope as she watched the American dream she had for her family vanish from the palm of her hands. This made her outlook on living in America completely different as she got older, she wanted nothing to do with this ungodly place.  Later she gave the doll to my mom, her youngest daughter, when she moved to New York to marry my father. As my mother went through the difficult hardship of immigration, she would always look at this doll and be reminded of who she is, no matter what document her name is put onto and what my grandma went through.

– Natasha

Relationship:  Child of im/migrant Child of im/migrant