It's taken me a long time to think of myself as a writer.
I first turned to writing as a way of
representing El Salvador as I knew it,
my parents homeland, a beautiful country full of stories,
the home to abuelita's farm.
Like many immigrant parents, my parents really valued education
but I'd never really thought about life in college. Let alone Harvard.
My cousin's in El Salvador aren't even able to go to school every day.
At Harvard, I have early endless resources.
People often think of writing as a lonely endeavor
but for me writing has always been about being conversation with others.
I've learned here that writing is stronger when it's rooted in a sense of community
that's how my writing led me to classmates with similar pride in being
immigrants or the children of immigrants. It was the inspiration for Palabritas,
a latin ex literary publication i co-founded this past semester.
If you write, you're a writer
I hope that being published in Palabritas helps people
especially those who have never shared their work begin to call themselves writers.
My dream is to build a career as a writer and an educator.
When I'm finishing a book manuscript, I know I won't be doing it alone.
It'll be on abuelita Carmen's farm
in El Salvador, a place of story
in the homeland of so many of the people
who've gotten me where I am today.