Julissa Arce and Nestor Gomez

00:04 Today is Thursday, January 23rd. 2020. I am in Chicago, Illinois with my friend and colleague Nestor Gomez. My name is Julissa Arce. Instagram told me I look like I'm 23 years old, but I'm really 36.

00:23 I know I'm here with you Lisa Arce. My name is Nestor Gomez. My age is like 47 years old. Today is January twenty-three 20/20. We are Chicago story corpse and we going to be doing a little interview and talk about importance of immigration stories.

00:45 So I want to thank you for taking the time. I know you're really busy and thinking the time if you have time to do this interview for 80 minutes around the world for immigration stories. We certainly don't look at that. We have. We try to give a platform we tried to get the space to the boys of immigrants The Descendants and allies to help people understand that immigration experience a little bit better and to help them.

01:15 So they don't they don't get ideas from the from certain people that I gave him the wrong idea that I might not know your story. Will you mind giving us telling us a little bit about yourself? Thanks for having me. I was born in Mexico and a small town girls basketball that I don't which is 3 hours south of Mexico City. It's a really beautiful place with white houses and cobblestone streets and a cathedral that I love to tell people with bills 200 years before the US was him in the country. And that's where I'm from. I came to the US when I was 11 years old because my parents are already lived in the US and for 8 years, I would only see them when they came when they would come visit me in Mexico, but when I came to the US

02:15 At the age of 11. I didn't know how to speak English and that was one of the toughest things to go through especially when you were a child and you trying to make friends but kids are mean and they make fun of your accent that your hair and your food and everything else in between. But by the time I was fourteen, I had learned how to speak English pretty well. I was making friends. I was starting to view the u.s. Is my home, but that's when my mom told me that the Visa that I used to come to the US had expired and so I have become one of the millions of undocumented people in the US and finding out that I was undocumented the way that I found out it's because I wanted to go to Costco to have my Quinceanera and I had dreamt of the day that I would be twirling around and a beautiful pink dress and that and to dance

03:15 I switched with my dad and my chambelanes and that day never came because my mom said you can't go to Mexico because if you go to Mexico you can't come back because my Visa had expired I was 14 at the time, and I don't think either me or my parents realized what being on documents it would mean for my future, but I started to really quickly figure out that being undocumented with a secret that I couldn't tell anyone about because things were different back then and I didn't tell anyone that I was undocumented. The first time that I realized they were real consequences to it was when I was applying to go to college and every college that I applied to rejected me because I didn't have an ID so security number eventually I was able to go to the University of Texas at Austin Hook em Horns, and I went to college and I graduated from college.

04:15 Which and made my way to Wall Street, and I worked at Goldman Sachs for almost 7 years and I became vice president say her and then I went to work at Merrill Lynch Where I Was a director and then I realized that I had a powerful story to tell that I wanted to share with people so that

04:42 I could have the very least share one truthful real-life experience of what it's like to be an undocumented immigrants in this country why we come to this country and the difficulties we encounter and that's when I decided to leave my job and become a writer become an activist and start my scholarship fund from the decision to become a writer a book was born from the decision. Can you tell us a little bit about the book because my underground American dream it came out in 2016 and

05:26 It's funny because I

05:28 I used to write a lot in my journals. That was the only place where I could be totally honest about not only what I was feeling but also what I was experiencing because I couldn't tell anyone why did certain things right? Like I couldn't tell people why I could never get a driver's license when I was 16. I couldn't tell my friends why I couldn't go on vacation with them on spring break to Mexico.

05:53 But in my writing I could be honest and one time shortly after my dad passed away. I wrote in my journal one day all of this.

06:07 Bppv is going to be for something. It's going to mean something and I said one day. I'm going to write a book and in that journal entry. I had written all of the chapters that my book was about would be would be about and that was like 10 years before I actually wrote the book but I always do that. I wanted to write a book and then I wanted to share my experience. It is send in my underground American dream. I talked about a lot of the year that I felt but I also talked about a lot of the things that I experience as a young woman working on Wall Street some of the Heartbreak the terrible boyfriends I dated because I didn't want it all to be about the pain. Like I also wanted it to be about the joy they were able to experience even when we're going through those tough things.

07:05 I'm glad that you say that it didn't just want to talk about the pain because a lot of people take him to

07:12 Play the immigration experience. I make it. So Sensational all they just want to focus on that either the pain or the bad things and after you wrote the book you wrote me out a second book. Why will write a second book when you already wrote one book that describes so many things was it is both a second part to the first book or is completely different. Yes. So the second book is called someone like me and it is a young adult adaptation of my first book. So it's pacifically written with young readers in mind, but there is about half of the book that is new and it's almost like app relog. So it's actually all the things that took place before I came to live in the u.s. Because of my underground American dream. I really wanted to focus on my life in the US and my experience working on Wall Street is an undocumented.

08:11 Where someone like me I really want it to show a different kind of family separation because I lived in Mexico and my parents lived in the US and we were still separated by this border even though they could come visit me for they could only come every once in awhile. I could only come visit them every once in awhile. And I also really wanted to show that I had a life before I came to live in the US because I think a lot of people think that I've heard enough for some for some young and document the people it is true that the u.s. Is the only home they've known because they came here when they were babies or months old, but I came here when I was 11 and so I had 11 years of my life that I lived in my beautiful hometown of Fasco and I really wanted to share those stories and also to make them to make those stories more relevant to a young adult to A fifth or sixth grader that is reading this book that maybe like me has

09:11 Never read a story about an undocumented person, you know asset as a young latina when I was growing up in school. I never read any books that had about the a protagonist or that

09:27 Hot Latino characters in them even and that's why I really wanted to write the second book was so that people like young kids in school could see themselves reflected in the books. They read in school. Now, I know the answer to this question before I asked you so I'm going to ask you because for those that are listening and don't know the answer. I don't have any idea. Why why do you need to tell you story? Why are the stories of somebody who is undocumented of a person called out so important? I think that

10:02 I should my story for two reasons one because there's so much disinformation about who undocumented people are and I think it's so important that we tell our own stories that were able to share our real life experiences told through our own Vantage Point not told through somebody else's lense where it just

10:29 Loses all its flavor or it gets piled up with.

10:36 Stereotypes and tropes and

10:42 Drama for the purposes of making a story interesting and so I wanted to share my story because I wanted to set the record straight at least from my perspective by my real life story but isn't the other reason why I also have felt a really big sense of relief when I shared my story because it's a secret I carried in me for such a long time and I think that the more we tell our stories the more people will know that we're here and that we've always been here and that our stories are important because I think part of the

11:17 Part of the part of the this world like

11:22 Lack of equity in the publishing world. For example, is that not everybody stories get treated the same not everybody stories get treated with the same kind of excitement and respect and I think the more we share our stories the more we'll be able to change that when you're so important to give up to the stories of document of undocumented immigrants. We try to bring people from all over the world from from Asia from Africa from Latin America people that came to this country because they didn't have they didn't have documentary, but I can't with documents people that came here for financial situation people that came here for political Asylum and we try to keep up like one to hold us all the people I like you say, he's so important to see somebody

12:14 Of call or somebody who live the same experience that you did and to be able to hear the stories. I remember when I was in high school. I never never heard of sorts of a documented and undocumented to and it was something that we couldn't talk about. I remember my my class went to Washington DC on a field trip and there was like about 10 of us that didn't go and we were like, oh, I don't have papers. I don't know what the reason why we couldn't go everybody else went went on from Chicago to Washington DC on a field trip and all of all of us the world documentary you stay there for like a whole a whole week. So it's important that degeneration get to hear the stories and like to hear that. I'm so in love with the fact that you care so much about that our youngsters you care so much about the fact that you couldn't get any scholarship. You now providing a scholarship for those that don't have any other means to connect

13:14 I'll tell you about that. I wanted I wanted to share with you that.

13:19 But the other thing that I think is really important about sharing our stories is that it makes us feel less alone. Right? Like I remember when I heard your story I listen to story.

13:29 I want to cry all over again because like when you were talking about language, right and how it's something like eating people people tell us I can learn how to speak English and it's like God, like, of course we want to learn, you know, we don't we don't not learn because we don't want to like it's really hard to learn another language and so many times our parents don't have the resources or the time because they're giving everything to us until we learn but then that language then becomes a barrier to like our own family and I just remember listening to you and like for the I hadn't been able to express that in the way that you did and when I listen to it, I was really able to put it into words right into and to say oh, yeah, that is what I felt like that. That's how I was feeling too. And I think that's what's really important is that it's like one person can feel less alone because somebody else lifted their experience. That's just like the most one of the most amazing things.

14:29 Think about storytelling so thank you for sharing with me and then not being able to talk so much with my mother because she doesn't speak in English and we learn a lot to speak English. So now that becomes like funking the separating me and my and my brother from my mother who could only speak Spanish as we learn English just going to like put yourself aside a little bit about this story is that that's what stories do the stories Bill Bridges. So I'm glad that through my story I was able to make a connection with you and through you writing you have make a connection with me because I'm a final your work. I am really looking forward to it. You have a presentation today at the American Writers Museum wish is a highlighting the work of American Writers.

15:29 Which is so important is really important. I just went to the exhibit and it's really amazing. It's really unbelievable. And I was so happy to see so many of my friends being part of the egg severe like somebody of my writer friends. I was like, yes, I'm so glad they're here to you were asking about the scholarship fund. I I started the scholarship fund with some friends in New York in 2013. We awarded at first scholarships and this last year we are close to awarding almost half-a-million dollars in college scholarships in the six. I'm almost seven years that we've been that we've been around it. Honestly think one of the best things that I've ever done in my life because I know how hard it is to find financial aid.

16:17 To go to college, especially when you're undocumented. And so the scholarship fund is called the Ascend educational fun. We are open to New York City High School students who were born outside of the US or who have two parents that were born outside of the US regardless of their immigration status or their ethnicity or their National Origins. So of the 64 students that we've helped go to college about a third or let me know about 1/3 or Asian and about a third of our African and so and and you know that that just happened because the diversity that already exist in New York City, right and says like those are the people that are applying to our scholarships and we're really really proud of the fact that this year. We were recognized as one of the top five Scholarships in New York state because I think

17:17 We make such a big investment in our students not only know our average award is around $10,000 and then we pair each of our students with a mentor to help them navigate because many of them are first-generation college student and there's so many challenges as a first-generation college student. Even if you take away the part of being undocumented, even if you are at were born in the US, but you're the first one in your family to go to college. There's a lot of challenges and so every year I'm just so grateful to meet this students because they have incredible resiliency and incredible perseverance and they're so smart and I think oh my God, I could never go to college now because I just like, how do I make it to College? These kids are so smart, but it's really awesome every year when we get to do it for recipients wow64. I mean is easily Saban

18:14 It's a lot of work. I can only imagine the different that you have made in the life of this 64 kids, like looking like I didn't go to college myself my reason why I wasn't documented but it wasn't just because I got my girlfriend pregnant this to bring back o the Times, you know, when I was in high school, what were the reasons why I got into a relationship was as well because I knew that there was no way for me to go to college. I'm like, yeah, mostly really just what you just said is like really another reason why stories has two important right? Because sometimes it's really hard to imagine ourselves.

19:06 In different positions with we've never seen someone that looks like as that talks like as a background like ours being in those positions, right? And so part of it is also like when I when I go to HighSchool and I talk to high school students or or today. I talked to 5th and 6th graders and

19:29 They they were asking me like we did when I was younger like that. I was want to be a writer or did I end up going to college because I sure sort of like the earlier stories and I love to share with them that where we are where we start doesn't have to dictate where we end up and like I think that's true at any stage in our lives, but I think that's really important to a sort of

19:58 Kind of instilling that hope in in people that that things are always possible. Right? Cuz I think that's the that's the most dangerous thing is like when we when we lose hope and when we just feel like well what's love, you know, you have become an inspiration for the little kids you were has become a lot of information for a little kid and that's why I stories are so important because he's pirates of the people don't know you create Bridges across communities and I trust people and hope people understand you reality you like better, but it also give hugs to other now. Thank you. I am I really appreciate you saying that I

20:39 They sometimes it's it's it's difficult sometimes because it's also very draining to be honest, like sharing your story and and and and having to do it all the time. And I think I've come to a place now. Where is a writer and I wrote I wrote an essay for the school library Journal. They asked me to write an essay about reading and writing in the Trump era and all that what I wrote in that essay, is that as a writer now, I am much more interested in writing stories for us and what I mean by that is that my whole life I've had to explain so much about myself to make people comfortable right when somebody ask me where I'm from and I say, I'm from Texas they said no but where you from from right and I say San Antonio and they're like No And I know what they're asking, you know, but I sometimes get annoyed and so I just pretend like

21:39 I don't know what they mean. And then I say, okay. Well, I'm from Mexico and then when I ask them where they're from and they say well, I'm from New Jersey and I'm a go where you from from and then I will from New Jersey and I'm like well where your parents from New Jersey what about their parents are about their parents, you know, and I can I switch back and say like why do I have to know where I'm from? But you know you asking me this question like you assume that I'm from somewhere else right at the answer so much as to explain so many things even in my book there were things that I just wanted to say that people reviewing the book would say we had to have to explain why people won't understand it, right? And then I was I was reading about the teacher in Texas who thought that she was sending private messages to to Trump on Twitter, but really she was just tweeting things over but

22:39 See what she was saying and she was saying things like my school's been overrun by illegals and I thought I am so much more interested in writing to her students as my audience. Then trying to change her mind sometimes tired of having to change people's minds and I just want to talk to other people like me who need encouragement who need to believe in themselves. We need to know that they're not alone and that has been like a big evolution in my writing is like, okay. I don't want to explain all the time. Sometimes there's a place for that and their stories for that. But what I really want to do is

23:20 Like energize acquire a someone said ones so much of that.

23:33 Thank you. Thank you so much for all your work. Thank you so much for

23:37 Again for giving hope to so many people are there.