In the heart of the Trujillo era, my great-grandparents denied my grandmother the opportunity to accept a scholarship that would fund her higher education within the United States. Within the Dominican Republic, she was one of the few students selected for this prestigious opportunity, only for it to be taken away by machismo and poverty. An entire generation later, my father embarked on a trip where home would be so distant, not even squinting could point you back to the shore. He dropped his family’s name in the ocean in exchange for a new last name, life, and identity. He gambled away his entire being all on a dream: when you don’t have to hammer in the tin roof into your home after every storm, your belly isn’t quaking with hunger, and you don’t have to sleep with one eye open each night. Legend has it that those who ventured across the ocean, sacrificing their pasts, would be blessed with good fortune in this new world: America. He had a white picket fence in his heart, and roofs that wouldn’t go gone with the wind.
Though the storm never blew and the Earth no longer trembled under his feet, his tongue was perpetually torn in this new country. English and Spanish were impossible to disentangle with his afro-pick; the harder he tugged the more tightly it was bound. Picking up people from all over Nueva York, collecting stories and short change, while racking up his mileage as a taxi driver became his hustle. He kept the dream that my grandmother carried neatly packaged, never opening it for himself. Instead, he passed it down to my sister and I. We would be the generation to unseal it. Two decades of loss, trauma, graduations, empty Christmas trees, blown out candles, and wishes later: here we are, the first generation in this entire tale to graduate from college, and me — having passed through not just one, but two ivory towers through undergraduate and graduate school. It was nothing like anyone could ever imagine.
For starters, I also traveled into a whole new world all on my own. I dropped my accent in exchange for a new one, dethroning the mighty tilde from my last name. The Bronx was so distant, not even squinting into the horizon could spot out the GW bridge. Much like my Taino ancestors must’ve been perplexed by the pink strangers that one day washed up onto their shore, changing their entire lives forever — deja vu was all too strong. There I was in Ithaca, on the flipside, my ancestors’ bodies drifting back on to this new shore. Less than 10 months into my freshman year, I had sabotaged the entire generational legacy of that dream. I was on academic probation, and in the midst of a deep depression. The remedy, its turns out, wasn’t to continue burning my hair to a European crisp nor was it isolate myself into my textbooks. Dusting off my accent from where I left it, and building my own home within an institution not designed with my community in mind, was my salvation. It was me, and my community — ironically, whom I had assumed "the problem” was; they were the solution all along. This seemingly small, yet revolutionary act of affirming myself and my folks, resonated powerfully for all four years to come. I finally graduated — twice.
College is what made the trek across deserts, oceans, and even the heavens worth it for immigrant communities. However, college as the golden standard for upward mobility is a mythological as the tooth fairy and meritocracy. Just because you get into college doesn’t mean you will get through it; just because you get through college, doesn’t mean your degree will instantaneously erase you and your family’s oppression. I was in the middle of a demoralizing job application cycle fresh after graduate school (more than 80 applications in, and little to no responses — if any, only rejections and silence) when I first heard about Future Leaders in Action. Upon a serendipitous encounter with a group of other women of color professionals that I looked up to, I learned that I wasn’t the only one that had experienced the paradox of being incredibly qualified by capitalistic standards yet perpetually unemployed and still struggling (whether it be trauma, food insecurity, to figuring out how I would pay back my loans). One fellow in particular, Clare (a paralegal now at Children’s Rights) informed me that she empathized with the difficulty of getting your first job straight out of college and how her connection to FLIA was what led her to where she is today. In a twist of fate, and convinced by these sisters in solidarity with me, I decided to give it a shot — even if it meant risking heartbreak yet again from another “Thank you for applying, but…”. At that point, only a day was left before the application would be due. Upon reading Kirsten’s own personal letter about her struggles with finding work after college and how this is an all-too-familiar struggle amongst people of color, women, and young folks, I was reaffirmed to indeed give this process another shot. In deciding who I would exactly work for through FLIA, I considered: why not work for the Fiver Children’s Foundation? Something as simple as the nonprofit’s name being inspired by Watership Down and its story about a rabbit who sought refuge for his family — much like my own, and even the participants I advised, have had to do from one country to another — was all too familiar.
Paola with Fiver Participants attending a Haunted House.
As a College Access Fellow at Fiver, I have had the opportunity to use my own intergenerational stories of trauma, persistence, and community resistance to relate to the narratives of the participants I have advised. In being real with them about imposter syndrome, college admissions, personal statements, financial aid, mental health, identity development, and life, I managed to build a special rapport with my community that became the heart behind my project to breathe new life into the Stand Up To College program, curriculums, and handbook. 50 pages in and counting, the handbook compiles past materials from the SUTC program as well as new theoretical frameworks (such as Critical Race Theory) as well as resources for students that are of color, undocumented, low-income, queer, disabled — any and everyone who has been left out from the design of institutions of higher education. I could see myself within participants’ stories of coming out, surviving toxic families, running away, and facing abandonment; I could also see myself through their tales of grit, kindness, healing, activism, and so much hope; from their introduction sentence all the way to their conclusion, hope has remained their thesis statement. I’ve carried their stories of agency, survival, and power within my heart and have honored their luchas into reaching the next tier of their journey — not just to, but also through and beyond college.
The last few sections of the SUTC handbook are dedicated to not just college access, but also persistence and success. It encompasses facilitating group and individual dialogues with participants about what it will feel like to have your dad drive onto campus for the first time with his taxi cab while everyone else is rolling down the windows of their sports cars, what it will mean when you are reconciling your racial, ethnic, gender identities (and all other intersections), how to develop healthier relationships, the art of asking for help and seeking out resources — and ultimately, when resources are not available to students like them in mind, how to advocate and fight for them, even if it means creating your own spaces of belonging.
It has been a privilege of mine to have worked at Fiver, specifically through FLIA. These two organizations have directly affirmed and empowered me, while affording me with the confidence in holding agency over the professional work that I inherently already had the ability to actually do, but didn’t know yet (because, you know, imposter syndrome). In the face of the college admissions scandal revealing an institutional ancient norm, I always tell my participants who doubt themselves, just as I have and sometimes continue to do so: not only do you deserve to be within these spaces, but you are indeed the expert of your own stories. Through utilizing a peer mentoring framework, blended in with the training and professional development skills I have gained from this experience, I’ve been able to build relationships with youth as well as foster a strong and sustainable structural foundation for a college program within a youth development nonprofit that will outlast my 3-month tenure. When I think about the dream that my grandmother must have held tightly against her chest, one that continues to breathe to this day, I can only begin to see her eyes awaken from that deep sleep. While I know this is just the beginning, I find it quite lovely to think that whisper of a powerful dream — not only for me, but for the youth in my community — will soon cease to be deferred.
For more information about Fiver Children’s Foundation feel free to visit www.fiverchildrensfoundation.com. If you would like to help fund my project with Fiver Children’s Foundation, you can donate at this link.