Gabriela Alcalde, 37. I emigrated from Lima, Peru, when I was 10. I love to travel. My biggest dream is to live with attention to what happens in the moment, especially with my children. When I think of my family, I think not only of my children but also of my parents and siblings. In moving to another country when we were young we created a kind of miniature-world of our own… everything changed year after year, but the constant was us.. that’s how we had more that the usual influence over each other. I hope my children will be as close to each other and that they grow to be as supportive of each other as we were. I also hope my children see me as their ally, just the way I see my parents.
The hardest about being an immigrant mother is to be able to continue those things that I value and that are not common here –the language, the food, our way of celebrating Christmas, etc. These traditions have an emotional vlue that connect us to the past, to the family, and is difficult to preserve sometimes because “nobody does it this way” and children sometimes resist. Also, to teach the children that to be an immigrant is something to be proud of and not to loose one’s identity is difficult when in this country there is currently such an anti-immigrant sentiment. Children are aware of that and they internalize it and perhaps are afraid of being “different”… it would be terrible for me if my children were not to recognize their Peruvian roots… it would cause me much pain. What I like the most about living in this country is that even though there is much prjudice, one can live in the manner that one chooses and one can believe in the things that one wants.
M. Cristina Alcalde, 35. Atntropologist/ university professor. I emigrated from Lima, Peru when I was 7. I love to cook, to write, and to plan trips. My biggest dream is to have all my family close enough to visit each other often and without worry of long distance travel. Something I’d like to say about me and my family is that we are rather close despite that, and maybe because we undersatnd the difficulties of living far away from each other.
The hardest thing about being an immigrant mother is to create an atmosphere where my children value and understand not only what is great but also what is problematic about their culture(s). What I like the most about living in this country is knowing that I have access to resources to take care of my family, and thinking that it is possible to find ways of changing that which contributes to discrimination in this society.
