Daniela Cuevas

“For one thing, most available jobs for undocumented immigrants are jobs Americans will not do, which takes healthy young migrants and makes them age terribly. At a certain point, manual labor is no longer possible. Aging undocumented people have no safety net. Even though half of undocumented people pay into Social Security, none are eligible for the benefits. They are unable to purchase health insurance. They probably don’t own their own homes. They don’t have 401(k)s or retirement plans of any kind. Meager savings, if any. Elderly people in general are susceptible to unscrupulous individuals taking advantage of them, and the undocumented community draws even more vultures. According to the Migration Policy Institute, around 10 percent of undocumented people are over fifty-five years old. This country takes their youth, their dreams, their labor, and spits them out with nothing to show for it.”
― Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, The Undocumented Americans

“Maybe death is a way to clean the self, of the body,
to finally celebrate it. A celebration should leave a mess.”
― Natalie Díaz, Postcolonial Love Poem

“All emotions stem from beliefs. You can't feel something without believing something to be true first.”
― Bashar

“How else do we return to ourselves but to fold
The page so it points to the good part”
― Ocean Vuong, Time Is a Mother