I grew up in Union City, New Jersey–a predominately Hispanic community across the Hudson River from New York City. It was here where the beginnings of my dual-identity, Hispanic-American, began to show itself. At school, we spoke English, while in the evenings we spoke Spanish. Without realizing it, I was being exposed to urban culture: Broadway shows, museums, music events, and various cuisines, fostering at an early age an appreciation for art, diversity, and intellectual pursuits. I was instilled with ideas of individual prosperity and socio-economic mobility. These were the opportunities, the livelihood, I understood to be seized. After all, parents immigrated to the United States with those very ideas in their mind.
Yet, I couldn’t shake this persistent feeling—a sense of being uprooted, of not quite deserving. These questions loomed over me: What does it mean to be American? What do we value? And what is the cost? This tension became the driving force behind the journey to understand my place in the world.
So many families in Union City and beyond continue to hold onto those ideas. What is it? What drove my father to work as a construction laborer across the United States? What resilience did my mother have to start a tax preparation business without knowing English? What pushed me to academically achieve? We call it the American Dream.
My upbringing laid the groundwork for my curiosity about global systems–the environmental, political, legal, economic, financial or cultural systems that help to make and remake the world we live in–and a desire to explore how these larger forces affect individuals and communities.