The story of the only undocumented writer to graduate from the University of Michigan’s MFA program.
Chris Ritter / BuzzFeed
My family of six immigrated from Tepechitlán, Mexico, in the spring of 1993 and crossed the border through the desert. I had just turned 5 and my mother was pregnant with my youngest brother. I always knew I was undocumented and I knew I wasn't supposed to talk about it. In the second grade, I worried over state tests not for fear of failing, but for fear they required a valid Social Security number. Being undocumented means you have to monitor everything you do because one mistake can be catastrophic. Citizenship is a privilege many take for granted, and they forget that they use this privilege every day. Beyond racial and economic barriers, documentation creates an overwhelming feeling of helplessness that complicates even the most trivial tasks. Being undocumented means being multiply marginalized, but unlike other American born minorities, you experience tremendous hurdles essentially in secret. Sometimes I try not to think about it, but reality always sinks in, it's very difficult to avoid.
In 2008, on an otherwise dull Sunday afternoon, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) surrounded our house and knocked on our door. They came looking for my father for unpaid traffic tickets even though he was deported back in 2003. They acted on a clerical mistake. By some miracle, they left peacefully without detaining any of my family. I was always reluctant to highlight anything that might point to my immigration and the events of that day cemented that feeling. I was determined not to see myself or my family in handcuffs. So I buried this part of me as deep as I could even from close friends. I never wanted anyone to know I didn't have papers. But the more I hid it, the more it became part of me. I knew being undocumented had nothing to do with my identity, but it was so pervasive that I couldn't help but think of myself through the lens of my status.
I began reading and writing poetry in high school because I was in love with a girl named Rubi. I absolved myself in poems. Poetry made sense to me in a way most things didn't. You didn't need a car for poetry, or a Social Security number, or a passport. It was there for the taking and it was beautiful. But I was alone with it. Early on I didn't have anyone to speak with about poetry because that wasn't what young, poor Latinos were supposed to do, according to the community I was raised in. My father is still confused about what I do exactly. His expectations for me, unlike my mother, were to finish high school and work in the fields.
Chris Ritter / BuzzFeed
Working two jobs to pay for college because my status kept me from applying for financial aid, I was determined to somehow use poetry as a way out. Even though I was studying at a diverse college, I was never exposed to the variety of diverse voices that would prove so fundamental in the years to come. My favorite poets at the time were white and male. At first it didn't bother me too much that I didn't see myself in their work — because I didn't see myself as belonging to begin with. I was content with loving their language from a distance rather than from within. I always considered myself a Latino poet but didn't know what that truly meant, and perhaps still don't. I felt that I couldn't say too much about myself for fear of ridicule or worse. To me the risk was real and I was constantly in survival mode. So when my professors asked me why I didn't use more Spanish in my poems, or write about the border, I wanted to scream at them. As with my life, I made myself invisible in my poems. I hungered for lyric rather than narrative because I was afraid of telling people who I was. I made myself invisible as a way of coping.
I applied to graduate school even though I didn't know if I could enroll if accepted. I took a leap in the dark, hoping they would figure something out if I got in. I only applied to the University of Michigan and the University of Iowa, not because I was confident in my sample (far from it), but because I could only afford to apply to two schools that also didn't require a GRE. After four months of waiting, I received the email many young writers dream about. Michigan accepted me. I sat in a Starbucks next to my wife, Rubi, to whom I wrote my first poem in high school. We wept uncontrollably while strangers stared on. But the joy was short-lived. Reality immediately hit as I realized I needed to tell them about my status.
