Cristina Jimenez is no stranger to the raging debate over immigration reform.
Jimenez arrived in the U.S. at the age of 13 when her family fled Ecuador. She navigated all of middle school, high school, college and early adulthood as an undocumented immigrant.
But Jimenez didn’t just tiptoe through gaps in the system. From an early age, she was an outspoken advocate for fellow undocumented people, working as an organizer on behalf of DACA. Among other things, she co-founded the immigrant youth advocacy group United We Dream and received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2017.
Earlier this year, Jimenez published a memoir called “Dreaming of Home,” which tells the story of how she found her voice as an activist.
The Show spoke to her recently, and she said one of the things she wanted to do in the book is convey the harsh emotional reality of living life in the shadows.
Full conversation
CRISTINA JIMENEZ: There's just so much fear for things that people do on a day to day basis, like going to the bank, like going to seek health care, like going to a school, like going to a supermarket, you know, even the most small of day to day activity carries so much risk. And I realized that even though those people on the other side of the counter, many of them are probably your listeners, teachers, people in the health care field. You may not know, but you have so much power.
SAM DINGMAN: Yeah.
JIMENEZ: You have so much power to make or break the life and the dreams of people on the other side of the counter like me.
DINGMAN: One of the other things that underscores is how important certain individuals who you come across in your life become to your story. And one of those people is somebody who in the book you call Mrs. B.
JIMENEZ: Mrs. B, who I still, by the way, keep in touch with, you know, more than 15 years later, I meet Mrs. B in my high school in Queens, New York City, one of the most diverse counties in the country. In my high school, there are over 70 languages that were spoken. And she is my ESL teacher and also the adviser of the Key Club, which, you know, promotes community service. She becomes the first educator that I feel safe sharing that I'm undocumented.
So when my college adviser tells me you can't go to college because you are undocumented and doesn't try to help me. And I am just shattered and heartbroken and crying, thinking I won't be able to make it to college. I went to speak to Mrs. B, and at the time, you know, many educators did not know how to help students like me, and she was sincere about that. She told me, you know, I don't know how to help, but I will figure out a way and get back to you. And she did.
And with her help, I was able to apply to the City University of New York and, and go to college. And so like, like Mrs. B, I think about, you know, educators, people in this moment that are engaging with immigrant families who have a choice to support these communities by providing information and help, or to close the door on them.
DINGMAN: Right, right, and there's also this sense in the way that you describe Mrs. B that she is aware of the stakes of the fact that you have divulged this information to her that it makes you so vulnerable.
JIMENEZ: Mrs. B, I remember, you know, not even flinching when I said that, you know, because I'm sharing this and the thing that I'm thinking about is what's going to happen next. Is she going to reject me? Am I gonna have to explain that my family and I are not criminals? And instead, what I get was a smile and a reminder that our conversation will remain confidential.
DINGMAN: Understandably, this book was not easy for you to write, and I was very intrigued by a brief story in the acknowledgments about a pivotal conversation that you had with the writer, Sandra Cisneros, that changed your relationship to the story.
JIMENEZ: Yes, you know, through the process of writing, I think I let my mind and my head to be more dominant in how I was engaging with this work. And so when I started writing, I started actually, you know, from a really angry place, and I was writing more from a place of being a strategist. Sandra Cisneros said, you know, Cristina, you sound very uncomfortable. Like you're wearing this suit. It's very tight. So what don't you get in your pajamas and you're right from that place.
And what she was, you know, what she called me to do is to listen to my heart and to tap in that place of vulnerability. And that's how I found my voice and I literally, I did the exercise as a good student of my friend and mentor, and I said, you know, I need to be in my pajamas and I need to be in bed.
DINGMAN: Could you give me an example, Christina, of something that found its way into a draft of the book after she told you that, like when you wrote the pajama draft that hadn't been there before?
JIMENEZ: My love story. So there is a chapter in the book, the chapter, title is Walter, who is my husband, and I met him as a fellow undocumented student in New York City, and he's the first undocumented student that I meet.
DINGMAN: Yeah.
JIMENEZ: And our friendship evolves into, you know, falling in love with each other. And that story was not in my first draft, but I realized how, how it was such a big important moment of my life when I contended with love as an undocumented person and having to worry about so many considerations just when you're even considering who to date, imagine that.
DINGMAN: Thank you for sharing that Christina. I'm so appreciative that you brought up that specific example, cause I literally have it on my, on my list here to ask you about that for me is the most powerful part of the book is when you talk about the realization that you and Walter are falling in love, because as a reader, you know, this story is going along and I'm like, oh these guys are definitely getting together. Like, it's, it's happening, like, just that, you know, from a narrative standpoint it you do such a lovely job of, you know, you, it's such a meeting of the minds and a meeting of the hearts in terms of the things you care about.
And then you have this really moving passage where you talk about how it's different for the two of us to consider the idea of having a life together because it's not necessarily up to us that that would happen.
JIMENEZ: Yes, it was deciding, are we willing to choose each other even though one of us could be deported at any time. And in unfortunate and fortunate ways, our journey ended up having to face deportation of Walter, ends up being targeted for deportation as he was going on a train to a meeting that we were convening of immigrant youth leaders in Chicago, and Border Patrol agents get in the train at like 2 or 3 a.m. in the morning, put a flashlight in front of his face, and asked him if he was a citizen. And when he says no, he's arrested. And then taken to a jail in upstate New York and immediately put on deportation proceedings.
And it is that situation, the fact that I could lose Walter forever, that sparks in us the clarity. We chose to give our love a chance because we did not want the injustice of our immigration system to take away our right to love each other.
