With a beautiful smile and a future as bright and fresh as her college sweatshirt, Jennifer is your typical American teen. What is a story of a typical American teen in 2020 you might ask? Well how about some more questions to help us: What is it like to be here, there, nowhere and everywhere? What is it like for every hello to come on the heels of a goodbye? What is it like to have home be something untethered, something you have to build and rebuild? Jennifer’s fondest memory of high school is that special night that night so many American teens have had: coming home from a party with friends, riding in a car, windows down and the wind on her face, the feeling of the freedom of that moment and of joys yet to come: sweet and solid and full of promise. “Leaving Jazmin’s (one of my Posse besties) graduation party in Tony’s car with Stefen and blasting music while driving through the trees and all the nature around us with window down and the wind hitting my face and feeling like that would be my group of people, that they would be my home in Tennessee, and being so excited for the next four years.” Jennifer calling her friends home really hit us. Those feelings of belonging, of acceptance – those acts of caring for each other, supporting each other, celebrating each other – that is how Jennifer is working to build a home for herself. They say home is where the heart is, but what does that mean if your heart is in more than one place?

For Jennifer, that means home is something not handed to her but something she creates. And it is not always easy: “Having to lose parts of myself for a bit in order to to find myself, having to work to develop the person I want to become. Trying to defy the bad traits I saw in my family and some of my communities, and trying to work on being the change and being a better person... I am very hopeful and excited about things coming up. I also know that there are going to be very hard times, but I am ready to conquer my future and use all the skills and mechanisms I have learned so far.” Highschool, like the life it is a part of, can be bittersweet for many. For every step forward, there are pieces – of our lives, of ourselves, of our family – that cannot come with us. This dance between gain and loss, between our past and our future, belongs to all of us surely. But for people who have made a journey between countries, between the familiar and the strange – those who have experienced migration, that cleaving of yourself from home and family – know that life dance, with its stark and acute rhythms, better than most.
“One of the most beautiful but sad experiences that I’ve had is coming to the United States by myself at the age of 10 and having to say goodbye to my mom in order for me to have greater opportunities in my future. Though I was excited to finally meet my dad and sisters after only seeing them for two weeks in the nine years since they moved to the US, I was heartbroken that a huge part of me would be left in Peru. Since I was very little I had always been a feisty, most of the time, impulsive little girl and this beginning to my journey of becoming who I am today did end up giving me more opportunities than I had ever imagined, and provided me with many adventures as well as the ones that are about to come.”