Racismo

“You cannot be wimpy out there on the dream-seeking trail. Dare to break through barriers, to find your own path.” Les Brown. In 2005 I had to face my own barriers, the barriers of culture anddifferent societies. I had lived in Ensenada, Mexico for 7 years. My life was all about colorful homes and the old lady at the corner store that would give me cherry lollipops. I remember the trees outsidemy house, green but with a layer of dust on them. I lived in a white house that seemed to be the best looking one in the neighborhood. I spent hours with my pets, 3 chickens and a dog. The classes atmy school didn’t seem hard. I was a playful girl whose life was about to be changed. One Sunday afternoon after coming home from church, my parents told us about something that had been going on inthe city and that was very important to us. Many kidnappings had been reported of business owners all around Mexico. I had no idea of that because my life had been all about school, pets and lollipops.Because my parents owned a small business in town and our family had been recently threatened, they decided that it was time for us to move to another place where we would be safe. At first Ichildishly refused. I was not going to leave everything I loved because a stupid kidnapper was targeting the people that actually worked to provide for their families. But that kind of thinking wasn’t goingto resolve my problem. We soon moved to El Cajon, California, starting my battle over barriers. First I had to defeat the barrier of a new language. On my first day of school in the U.S I realizedthat tears do not solve anything, except perhaps making one feel temporarily better. It took me about a year and a half to be able to fluently communicate and feel somewhat confident speaking to peoplein English. Everything seemed different, I didn’t understood why there weren’t any corner stores or why I just couldn’t go out to the street to walk by myself, or go walking to my friend’s house....