Reyna Grande - Somewhere We Are Human: Authentic Voices on Migration, Survival, and New Beginnings

This is a book that makes visible those who have been invisible for years to the rest of the world. A wonderful and unprecedented collection [that] allows the reader to conclude, unequivocally, that at the end were all human... the only difference is just a little piece of paper. Immigration is the new frontier in the struggle for human rights. If you really want to understand what it is to be an immigrant, to be forced to leave your home, and to arrive in a new country, you have to read this book.

Jorge Ramos, journalist and news anchor with Univision

This collection is not only a great read, but an important one. I applaud everyone involved.

Luis Alberto Urrea, Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling author of The Devils Highway

This essential and moving anthology serves to humanize the dehumanized. The people who walk through these pages not only survive, but flourish; not only cross borders, but demolish the concept of borders; not only break down stereotypes, but build bridges, whether of language or steel. Even the title itself presents a challenge: if somewhere we are human, then everywhere we are humaneven here, even now.

Martn Espada, National Book Awardwinning poet of Floaters

Urgent, necessary, and bold, the voices in this trailblazing anthology show us that their experiences are unique, but unquestionably part of the larger American story. Kudos to Grande and Guiansaca for amplifying this vibrant community of artists and writers! Their meticulous selections offer us an extraordinary range of histories, perspectives, andmost touchinglydreams.

Rigoberto Gonzlez, American Book Awardwinning author of Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa

In this essential anthology, there lives both beauty and terror. So often these stories are told by others; now we get to hear them told by these artists themselves. What a gift as these vocal cords sing, ringing of human resilience and love, so much love.

Victoria Chang, award-winning author of Obit and Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief

The voices telling these stories and the stories themselves have not always been embraced in publishing, which makes this book such a glorious gift to readers and so necessary and vital for our times.

Ligiah Villalobos, writer and executive producer of Under the Same Moon (La misma luna)

Every piece in Somewhere We Are Human is so full of heart and rigor, it makes this collection one of the most important additions to undocumented literature. The poetry, prose, and visual art in its pages forge an incandescent testament of what it means to migrate, survive, and start anew.

Ingrid Rojas Contreras, author of The Man Who Could Move Clouds: A Memoir

A mesmerizing immersion into the lives of the undocumented, Somewhere We Are Human is a bold, definitive departure from the common and inauthentic study of disempowered populations as portrayed by others. This brilliant and inspiring volume challenges us to create a world where it is not a sin to be born in places we must escape in order to survive, nor to travel to refuge in a place we are not welcomed.

Carmen Tafolla, State Poet Laureate of Texas and author of Ill Always Come Back to You, Arte del Pueblo, and others

The only anthology edited by and featuring primarily writers whove been undocumented, this glorious collection speaks against the power of the state and what the state cant see: the fullness of people who are so much more than their papers. A convening of voices from across the global south, these writers testify of the pain of family separation and the classed experience of migrant labor, also of organizing against ICE, prisons, and the DAPL pipeline, and also of queer love, the joy of clubbing, and the love we have for those who came before us. This is what solidarity looks like!

Ken Chen, award-winning poet of Juvenilia

Somewhere We Are Human incites in me the kind of riot of heart and feeling and thinking that can only happen when many voices are soundingall at oncepart of the history of the world. Vital and radiant. It is a book so plural and shiftful that you cannot be the same after reading it.

Aracelis Girmay, award-winning poet of Teeth, The Black Maria, and Kingdom Animalia

Some names have been changed to protect peoples privacy.

Excerpt from Tuck, E. T., & Ree, C. (2013). Handbook of Autoethnography. S. L. Jones, T. E. Adams, & C. Ellis (Eds.). Anchor Books. Excerpt from A Glossary of Haunting reprinted by permission of Anchor Books, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

SOMEWHERE WE ARE HUMAN . Copyright 2022 by Reyna Grande and Sonia Guiansaca. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST HARPERVIA EDITION PUBLISHED IN 2022

Cover Design: Stephen Brayda

Cover Art: Elias Roldan

Digital Edition JUNE 2022 ISBN: 978-0-06-309579-3

Version 05092022

Print ISBN: 978-0-06-309577-9

Yaccaira de la Torre Salvatierra,

this one is for you, mujer!

REYNA

To my parents, and my abuelitos

este libro y todo es siempre para ustedes.

SONIA

Human beings have always migrated and will certainly move even more in the era of climate catastrophe, but the United States of America has laid claim to the idea of migration as part of its ideology. This way of thinking proclaims we are a country of immigrants. But dont call it ideology. Americans believe that ideology is for the Marxists, socialists, communists, and critical race theorists. The American Dream exists beyond ideology, as the dream everyone all over the world must be dreamingaccording to Americans.

Immigration into the United States by certain people terrifies some Americans. It could also be argued that the idea of immigration validates America to these same Americans. Of course, people want to come here, for we are great, or will be great again as soon as we have the right kind of people coming here. This anthology, Somewhere We Are Human, takes on the paradox of immigration and xenophobia that exists at the heart of America, by which I dont mean the United States in reality, but this mythical country of the American Dream that is so deeply rooted in the American psyche that many Americans, even the liberal and critical ones, have a hard time unrooting it.

The stories, poems, and artwork in this anthology address this paradox wherein America represents itself as the land of new beginnings but is also a place that is so demanding of its newcomers that they must think, Somewhere we are human. If America is great, then why is the humanity of anyone in question? Why must anyone long for their own innate humanity, one that is denied by some and even by many? The American story of so many newcomersas well as indigenous people and the descendants of the enslavedis therefore one of survival.

Racism, indifference, misunderstanding, microaggressions, exploitation, family separation, the terror of being undocumented and under threat of deportationthese are all part of the terrain of danger and survival for newcomers. In this sense, the anthology affirms what is already well-known about the American story of migration, which is that in order to become American, to participate in the American Dream, to be a part of American exceptionalism, the newcomers often and unfortunately have to undergo rites of initiation that range from contempt to brutality.