As a first generation Mexican-American, I try to learn as much as I can about my parent’s past life in Mexico and their own personal experiences living in a different country. My mother hails from Chihuahua, Mexico; knowing this helps me to try and understand the type of lifestyle she lived prior to coming to the United States. Coming to the United States meant losing the financial and social stability she had in Mexico. Just like other first-generation Mexicans, my mother immigrated to the United States for a better life and better opportunities for my siblings and I. At the tender age of twenty, my mother got pregnant with my eldest sister. Still living in Mexico at the time, she decided that moving to the United States would be the best thing for her and my sister. Before arriving in the United States, she was thrown a baby shower by one of her favorite cousins and her mother. At the baby shower, she was given a corsage to wear throughout the festivity. This corsage meant a lot to my mother as it represented the start of two new chapters in her life: a newborn baby and the act of migrating to a new country. Migrating to the United States was the venture of a lifetime for my mother but I know that it was one of the most courageous and selfless things one can do in their life. Her journey mirrors the same challenges that other Mexican-Americans faced when migrating to the United States for the American Dream.

– A.G.

Relationship:  Im/migrant Im/migrant