Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, my grandmother grew up in a large, hardworking family that lived in poverty. Continually struggling to get by, my grandmother, along with her siblings, was put to work at very early age, cutting her academic education off at the sixth grade. From then on not many opportunities were available to her, so when it came time to have her first child, she knew that she wanted to give her child a better life. In attempts to do this, my grandmother tried to cross the border eight months pregnant with my mother. So close to making it to America, the rough and bumpy journey to the border induced labor, resulting in my mother being born in Tijuana, Mexico. It wasn’t until my mother was 13 that she permanently resided in the U.S, ending the back and forth travel between Mexico and America. My mother faced a lot of oppression and discrimination as an immigrant, especially being one from Mexico, but that did not stop her from having a better a life than my grandmother, and providing my siblings and me with an even better life than hers. Although life hasn’t entirely been easy for us as Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, we have been able to live a life that we can enjoy. Every time my grandmother travels back to Mexico to see her family, she stops in Tijuana to buy bracelets like these to bring back to us. For my mother, these bracelets connect her to a place unfamiliar to her and remind her of my grandmother’s first attempt at giving her a better life. 

Relationship:  Im/migrant who arrived as a child Im/migrant who arrived as a child