good afternoon. it's a privilege for the shepherd bride foundation to sponsor this session that will illuminate the immigrant experience in this country in honor of its founder, shepherd broad foundation supports community efforts to welcome the stranger and promote and ensure the humane fair and just treatment of immigrants. you will hear echoes shepherd broad's journey to america. 102 years ago as a 13 year old orphan. in the stories of these writers today, both the hardships and the acts of kindness let these powerful stories guide us in. how we can better embrace the immigrant peoples and families among us embrace, them for their benefit for ours and for the whole of the nation and so here are our authors. maria aina hosa anchors and executive produces peabody award winning show latino usa, the

longest running national latin x news program in, the country. she has won four emmys. the studs community media award, two robert f kennedy awards, the edward r murrow award from overseas press club, and the reuben salazar lifetime achievement award. lee tron graduated from columbia university in 2014 with a degree creative writing and linguistics. she has received fellowships from macdowell, art, artemis and yaddo, house house of sticks. this is her first book. javier zamora was born in el salvador in 1990. his father, the country when he was one, and his mother when he was about to turn five. both parents migrations were caused by the us funded salvadoran civil war. when he was nine, javier migrated through guatemala,

mexico and the sonoran desert. his debut poetry collection on, accompanied, explores the impact of the war and immigration on his family. zamora has been a stegner fellow, stanford and a radcliffe fellow at harvard and holds fellowships from the national endowment for the arts and the poetry foundation. welcome. our illustrious group. a lot of work, a lot of water, high. the books. we love that. what's up, miami? yeah. i haven't been back since the pandemic, so it's like, thank

you for inviting me back. it's been great. and incredible career. and lee, i feel so honored to be here. i just a lot of gratitude. that's because i finally out exactly where i needed to be. if i some if you saw me this morning when i was trying to find where i needed to be, i was a very grumpy. i was like, what is this many people? but honestly, what a beautiful community event that so many people. miami, this is such an incredible cultural event, the city of miami. and i'm so glad that it remains such an important part of your city. so kudos you make that happen. i mean, not the organizers. i mean. yes, the organizers really. it's your tone turn out so. thank you so much. so i i'm the author of a memoir once i was you a memoir of love and hate and tour in america that was just released in september for young readers. and that is called once i was you finding my voice and passing the mic.

and it literally is for kids and talking about, okay, this is how i found my voice and this is me passing the mic. so the first thing i want to do actually is to pass the but everybody has their own like and there's something that we do in my i do a show called in the thick, it's a politics podcast. it's like meet the press. but with only journalists who are not white men and and we drop a lot of f-bombs, which are very. so it's not meet the press at all. we have a lot laughter. but the thing that we do, we start out by asking political journalists, right, because we only talk politics like how they're doing, like what's their state. we call it a temperature check. so how we're what's your temperature check? how you're doing, mr. fabulous author, poet. um, let's see, i am tired, but i'm in a humid place that reminds me of home is only the second time that i'm ever in miami. so i should be at 75.

but it feels like a 95. oh, lee, what's your temperature check? how are you? um, it's a good question. i feeling very happy. this is my first time here in miami, and so far, so good. just excited to be here with javier zamora, especially. we met back in 2015. yeah, and we've remained friends since. it's it's come full circle, so very happy. so lee, actually, i'm going to start with you. did you know you wanted to write a memoir? i actually studied fiction in college. so started this book originally as a novel where i had the idea to write a novel, but it transformed into a memoir. and how do you feel about that? i feel really good about it, actually, because, you know, growing up, i was always searching for glimpses of representation of myself on the

page, in literature, in the media. and i never found that. and i think it a lot more to people to know that. the story that i wrote is, a true story. javier, you're a poet. you define yourself as a poet. your memoir is no instances. and you're also a podcaster. and the first version of solito was we didn't call it solito, did we return the return, which was broadcast on latino usa. so we feel really special it turning into such a beautiful and i was your guest. i'm just going to put this out that joe had just been in the booth to the day before was there. and now that joe is going to be he's going to be here at 6:00. so it's like, you know, yeah, fat joe's fun. he's really he should be here. where are you, fat joe? somebody put yo, that's beautiful. that you remember that? yeah.

so what's your sense of the poet who is a memoirist who had write memoir, which is such a particular thing. i'm from latin america. i feel like in latino, we don't have strict genres i never once started writing poetry free. i never felt tied to it. and like i wrote a memoir, now i don't feel tied to writing a memoir again. it's almost like all, every out there from latin america has at least either started out as a poet or a journalist. and i think it's just where you where you test your chops and where you lay a foundation. and for me, being a poet has helped me cut down words to throw in jordan poetry for the

people in peace. her idea of minimum words, maximum can translate very easily into prose as as poetry. so it's like it's just writing. so. gabriel garcia marquez, journalist is isabel allende a journalist? my journalist inspiration from mexico. elena tosca, who then writes novels also as well as journalism. and you're right. and i don't know how many people know the incredible tradition poetry in el salvador. but i'm beside the great writers of el salvador. so you're cool. you don't feel the pressure. you feel like you creatively. your unique retort to, yeah, i'm an artist, a northeastern quitter. okay, do you paint as well? i actually wanted to be first a musician. okay. and i can't read music and i

can't i don't you my wife can say that i can't even sing for --. but the rhythm i, i think do i have rhythm. and then i wanted to be a painter and painter, expensive. and then i like okay, pen and paper. it is. oh, really? oh, you. what did i want to do? thank you for asking the question. yes. i definitely never thought i wanted to. i mean, there were no i couldn't see someone who looked like me doing journalism. so invisibility is actually really bad for your mental health because you internalize it and you believe that if if i don't see it, it's not possible. so when i would see the incredible journalism, i would be just like, wow, what a cool thing to do, but never. and i want to do it. hamas and then i want it to be actor and some man took away all of my power. but by the way, if you haven't

seen in the heights my dream came true because i'm in the movie. you're like, you're. yeah, i was the activist if you haven't seen in the heights and you see it now. so my dream came true of being an actor. yes, but i don't think you know this because we just met and i'm savoring the minutes until i get to sit down in the plane on my way to rome tonight. i know, i know. i'm really doing that. i'm taking lives book. have you ever will be for the return but what you don't know is that in my memoir and in my life actually the vietnamese experience is central. why? why? because the war that was not happening here was in vietnam. and so every image that i had about being a journalist, a reporter, and of course, also covering the vietnam war, the first televised war was not like we understand now, and that made

a huge impact on me seeing so many vietnamese people hearing about vietnam all the time. every single and yet never from any vietnamese people. so i didn't know what they sounded like. i know what they looked like. i knew the crying, but never somebody who could explain or have a voice. this impacted me greatly as a journalist, as a future journalist. then and then the vietnam refugee reality was the first televised refugee --. i'm not going to call it a crisis because it's humanity, because i don't want to say always there. but, you know, it was a massive moment. it was the first one that was televised. and my colleagues had the capacity in their brains to label human pity, seeking refuge

after a war that this country inserted itself in and prolonged and was responsible for so much blood on their hands. and then they label your family, your family's boat people like, oh, you know, the boat people. no, no, no, no, no, no, no. so that would mean that the salvadorian yours or what? multi-course or mexicans who are now forced by law from this country the exclusion and they forced to sleep on the sidewalks and the concrete in mexico that then are my colleagues should call them concrete people sidewalk people in cement. they how could they the people boat people this impacted me so greatly and one of my greatest moments was as a budding journalist when i end up at npr producing for scott simon and it

was, les texas says questions. and they were like, you're going to produce of our reports on taxes. and i do things differently i always have. and i was like, well, we're going to tell the story of the vietnamese refugees in texas because they are now a part of texas and going to corpus christi, christi, not crispy christi and giving them like to a vietnamese refugee woman who said, yes, have this freedom, but i'm so alone. i'm so alone. and then she took the mic and she sang the star-spangled because she wanted to say, but still, i love this country. so what are your thoughts about because like to me, the vietnamese dynamic is just so important in my life. and that's why i'm so honored to be here and so excited, so happy for all of the success that your memoir is having. thank you so much. well, what's interesting about the boat people is that i my

family and i don't belong in that category of boat people because we came over by plane through something known as a humanitarian operation in 1993, which helped resettle all former prisoners of war here in the states. and my father served almost a ten year sentence as a prisoner war in the reeducation camps of vietnam. and so when he heard in 1993 that there was this operation that the united states was funding, he applied and came over here. the six of us, me, my parents, my three older brothers, and we grateful to be in this country. so i can really to this vietnamese refugees singing the star-spangled banner. but it was, you know, mixed in with a feeling of desperation as because when we, you know, stepped foot off that plane, we already owed america those plane tickets. we had to pay back those plane

tickets. so we were in debt and we had to find a way to make ends meet. and, you know, my first job here in america at the age of three was doing sweatshop labor with my family in order pay back those plane tickets and one of the things that has drawn attention was one of the reviews i read that said that oftentimes in our situation, right when we are immigrants or refugees and there is a complicated history as always there and, we know this. i mean, look where we are. we're in miami, in florida, a state that just voted in a way. and people have been asking me for my earlier presentation. what do we do with our family members who come and then kind of turn their back and forget right close the door behind me and i'm wondering about your like in your memoir. it's both really all three of ours. it is actually about being attached to that, whereas many people are like, i want to get

away from this as fast as possible, as possible, and i just want to your thoughts about or lee, your thoughts about that because somebody said it. lee actually, her work up, what makes it so incredible is that you connect it so deeply to your parents suffering and not that that's what you stay, but that you're like not i 100% identify why i think children are a lot more aware than we give them credit for it. and so, you know, my my three older brothers and i we were doing sweatshop labor together as a family and we were having so much fun. you know, we saw the world, the lens of wondering magic, but we were very keenly of the suffering that my parents were going through, having to keep a roof over our heads. and so we never let on that. we, too, felt their suffering. we were suffering ourselves. we wanted, in a way, protect them from us. and i think it's phenomenon that

many immigrants, children of immigrants and refugees, share this this, you know, wanting to protect their old was your oldest brother. he was six years older than me. so the time he was nine. nine. yeah, yeah. how about you? how did you about your parents. i know your our hearing what i heard was why would somebody once in this country vote read that? that's what that that that's right. well, okay, we're. well, that's what i heard. and for i think part of coming to this country, we as immigrants it's very hard for us to remember the trauma we don't talk about what it took us to make it here because it's very difficult and especially if you're a child, you don't want to see the suffering and when you don't want to see something, you ignore it and you try to

hide away and for myself, part of being in this country had to be assimilation. like i went deep into assimilation to a point where i, i people that i didn't know how to speak spanish and in that assimilation you were trying to hide because you're trying to hide and to make people not ask questions about where you're from, if you have papers, etc. , etc., etc., and eventually you don't want them to ask you about the trauma. and that's when you don't have a therapist or you don't have these means for mental health. that's why you see a latino voting red, because a lot of the times we don't want to face the things we that brought us to this country to begin with. well, because those stories that's why i love that we tell these stories right. that's why i'm a professor. that's why i do the work that i do is to amplify the stories, because so many of these stories

are told in shame and it's like bitter, porky gives shame, as if it's like a salvadoran story or a vietnamese story. and these are american stories. they're american stories, period. and so that to me, just the the telling of this story is the the the honesty with which we tell them is what helps. and that's actually why i wrote the young readers version, not because i thought i was going to write for teenagers. and then i thought, no, by the time they're teenagers, it's all like trauma has already gotten so deep that if i write the memoir for ten year olds, that then they can move teenage hood with a certain level of awareness. well, you mean there's there's moment in your book, lee, where you talk about your earliest memory, which is just, you know, because you're like, i open my eyes and i see the blue for the blue tarp from the refugee camp that you were in. and everybody knows that. i mean, similar to this blue. but, you know that memory right that you see it right here so

much of what you do is about memory your earliest memory my earliest memory. i'm three years old and. it's my birthday and i'm in front of a cake and i mess something up and mom gets mad at me and then crying so and i know you're asking this i don't know because your first memory tells you a lot. your childhood and your life and for me, my first memory is crying. and i think it's almost like a fourth tale of what would to me. and then we can also talk about horoscopes and i believe i didn't believe in horoscopes until like my pluto is in some placement that it told me that something was going to happen, has happened to when you were nine and you're going to this is the event that you're going to talk about for the rest your life. so i was like, oh --. that's why i believe in them. like, now i'm a believer of horoscopes and what's your sign?

aquarius. aquarius what's your sign? capricorn. oh, right. yes. what's your sign? cancer. oh, oh, cancer. the feeling, all the feelings, all the feelings. explains everything it does, it does it does explain everything which is your first memory? so my first memory. and actually, i'm going to do therapy between now and my flight to rome. yeah, i'm trying to squeeze it in wherever i can. and i'll tell you why in a second. but my the most amazing therapist she was my my other therapist actually passed away. and so i had to find a new therapist and started to do work on trauma and was when i realized that i had been raped at 16. right. and i didn't really understand this all and i had to process it. it's in the book. but she was like, before we get to that event, she was, what's your first memory? and then it turned out that

actually it's a little bit of trauma. not for me personally, but it does foretell certain things right? i remember vaguely the death of john f kennedy, the assassination of john f kennedy and seeing walter cronkite crying. and i was really little bit like that. so what are the possibilities that i would end up being like remembering walter cronkite, you know, that that would be something that is seared into my memory and that i end up becoming a journalist and my other earliest memory is trying to learn english by listening to the 45 little record, my fair lady and the song super cool of gradualist, accessible and delicious. and i was like, that's english. i have to learn how to say that because that's english. and i was like, super callow, what the heck. so yeah, do you do you think that you'll write more or not? that i mean, because we were like, you just wrote a memoir,

you want to write another one? it's like, well, but how are you feeling the in terms because you studied a nonfiction, you wanted to write fiction rather and so were you at a loss. i'm actually currently working on a novel so yeah, i'm returning to my first love. yeah. how's going? it's going. you know, i haven't written anything yet. you know, writing is 90% thinking or so. tell myself so what are you doing? what's. what are you thinking? how are you doing? the thinking, the creative process. because actually think that's a really interesting part of the story. yeah well i've storytelling is has always accompanied me all throughout my life and so the book will be an homage to storytelling it's going to be about an agoraphobic mother daughter duo, the daughter is yearning to explore the outside world. the only way she can do that is through telling stories and yet and some of these stories will be maybe some of the stories i told myself when i was doing sweatshop labor, growing, it was the stories that i use to keep

myself awake, you know, having to so however many hundreds, sometimes thousands of comer buttons and ties before lights out. so that's what i'm working on. and yeah, like i said, i plotted the entire thing in my head and i just need to sit down and that is what it ultimately comes down to. what were you gonna say? how has your has your family read the the memoir? yeah, my brothers have read the memoir. what what is your relationship with them or like before. yeah i think i'm a lot closer to my brothers now. i love my family dearly, but something about this book has really brought us all together. my mother has been on duolingo for the past year and a half trying to learn english. so she can read this book. oh my god. yeah, it's really touching and, you know, she she calls me every other week telling me that she's gotten through chapter and she sort of checks in with me. is this what the chapter's about? and i'm so surprised. i'm so impressed that she gets

about 70, 75% of it. um, my father on the other hand, so there are photos of my family more. yeah dad. so he has just bookmarks the page with his photo on it. and he goes around telling people, you know, my daughter wrote a book, it's about me. you should read it. in theaters. you know, that's a good book. i think he's a leo? actually. those leo's, you know. but i think it's his way of showing that he's. proud of me. i love that. yeah. has your family the memoir a my mother. yes. yes. no, please do my. and we're about to open it up for all of you. get ready with your questions. so, yes, my mom, my sister one brother, my some of my family in mexico. and i actually had to because was going to kind of write this is for the adult version for the

readers version. i actually did not include the assault which happened when i was 16, but because it was in this version and it was such an important part of the adult version. i did have to sit down with my my mom, my sister, my two brothers and just be like, so this happened. wow. and my mom and my sister my dad, me, he rest in peace. they were in the where it happened. they they didn't know what was happening, but it happened there. and so there was like and also my brother was like, let me out home and i was like, it's okay like it's a long time ago. also, i'm a boxer. if i want to take him out, i'll take him out. um, but was yeah. and they've been supportive even even actually my conservative mexican family in has read the version in spanish and they're you know, they try to walk gingerly around the the fact that i write about abortions or you know being survivor of rape and they're like, i'm lulu is my little maluleka i wanted to trabajo we wanted them. we wanted travel. it's like, do you want to about

we want you to. all right. well if you want to start. i mean, i love conversations the audience because we can sit here and talk forever and ever and ever at least what i was going to ask you again, start forming. don't be afraid. william mckinley. you got hypothermia in queens. did you hear what i said? so in 1990. what three, 1993, me got hypothermia in queens with a roof over her head. and one of the things that i'm haunted and obsessed about right now is what is happening with. children being trafficked, right? you were with your family, but now, you know, we have children who are being trafficked along with their parents and ending up like in the city of new york, they put on a beach or randall's

island. these are refugees from what, similar a coup, haiti, etc. . and the possibility that one of them might get hypothermia in the year 2022. and i think this is for me one of the more frustrating elements of this dynamic. i mean, what success. what extraordinary success. but the fact that the conditions have yet faced or that lee faced horrific conditions in many ways still exist and have only gotten worse gomez possibly. i was going to ask you a question, but since we have a full lineup, just ask your question, please. thank you. i don't know if can. yeah, we can hear you. okay. mine. i read solito and thought it was fabulous. but i have two questions for you. i don't speak spanish and so i felt most of the book got the gist of it.

one part i had to give to somebody to read for me and make sure i got it. i wondered how you. what parts to leave in spanish and and how you made what your thought process was. and then my other question was did since the books has come out, did you have you reconnect it with the people that you were hoping to. thank you. thank you. thank. that is the most asked question and i'm still asking it myself. have not been i haven't heard for them. i don't i don't know where they are. they not even be in the country anymore. they might not even be alive. i don't know. i hope that they do reach out for those who haven't read the book. i wouldn't be here without the help. a 29 year old mom and a 12 year old daughter and a 19 year old man who i named who went by chino because latinos were racist and and i was nine and

they literally fed me, cut it old me and helped survive. so there's that. the language question salvadorans the number two biggest immigrant group and united states we just passed puerto ricans two years ago and we're only going to continue to grow growing up you know the stereotypical toni morrison quote you know what you want to read, growing in this country as an undocumented kid from el salvador. there were books that with that looked like me, but they didn't talk like me, meaning there's a i talked about assimilation to the to this country and that would be an assimilation towards english. there's also an assimilation of your native spanish. so and where you land in this country and the west coast is

mostly dominated by mexican spanish. your we're in a mostly cuban centric spanish if you go to certain parts of new york city or be puerto rican, dominican or colombian, you know, and so it is very important for me to highlight culture, which is salvadorans living and yeah, i think it's talking about representation and and and passing mic to i just wanted to it and in that we have something there's an audio book of it yeah right so because i just think that salvadoran slang also has just such great its intonation. yeah it's it's i love it. i love it very. yes. your question our club read and this is this going to be made into a movie. i don't know. i are you actually are you asking if it's been optioned. yes. has it been optioned? we're we're on it. see, that was the question we're

working on. okay. my favorite book club member. our book club loved the book so much and for anyone that hasn't read it, i felt like it was reading poetry. but my question is, it was such a deep dive into childhood memories. like i as an adult, you remember things that happened when you were a child, but the level of detail was extraordinary and it's a memoir. but can you talk to us about the process and how you recalled that level of detail or is it actual recollection or did you go back to some of those places to see what the plants look like and things like that how was it for your sex, for your really? oh --, she's much taller now. oh, that's how did your write the memoir? i did. how did you remember all the details as well? i because i forced myself i

mean, i just as a journalist, you know, always that's the whole thing is like the level of detail. i, i do a kind of i go into a level of hypnosis when i write. and i think that that's one thing that helps me unlock memory. yeah. i mean, i think, my book, there are moments that are extremely detailed, those other moments that have had, you know, the greatest impacts on me. and, and then there are moments that really murky and i just leave them murky because that's how memory is. memory is reconstructed. memory is not perfect. there was also a period of my where i couldn't see for about ten years. i had severe and my father was a p.o.w. suffered paranoia, so he thought glasses were government conspiracy to take away my eyesight. so i was never allowed to wear glasses. and so those of my book lacked detail and i just left it like that because that was more true to reality. so that's -- interesting because

for i suffered when i began to i didn't, i didn't want to be a writer. i began writing when i was eight, 17. i thought that i wanted to be an engineer, but then calculus hit and then i had to try in school. but once i started writing poetry. i have this condition that i go blind. i have a night migraine, which less than 2% of people get it. it's like sometimes it's a precursor to a full blown migraine, which i like that i go blind, i don't want to feel headache, but it's when i'm stressed and it was when i began to look at the episodes that i describe in the poetry, which if i were to use about a metaphor, the poetry is just a tip of the iceberg. and i wrote the poem the without therapy, and it took me ten years to write and 88 pages of poetry with therapy. it took me two years to write 400 pages of prose.

and i think that is you could see the change of what therapy does and does not. i've been therapy since seventh grade. i'm finally with a therapist who is from the d.r. and as a child immigrant herself, you can her up when the carolina franco ph.d. like she's the -- -- --. and and so there's that for me, understanding my actually what you as a reader might think are the hardest things to write were actually the because as a little kid what my brain did it clung to the details. i can tell you like right now the thing that always comes to mind is when i'm on the ground with i can tell you what that dirt smelled like. everything happens for me. not every trauma survivor, but and i also want to say that immigrants, survivors, i'm a survivor of what happened to me. and so the trauma happened in like blu ray, dolby surround

sound, 4k. the hardest parts were the waiting. and for those parts. yes i would i have now with the privilege i have a green card now that your episode helped with for latino usa. i just got a green card in 2018 so now i can go to the border and i can fly to wadala. i can fly to all these places that i wasn't able to and until i was 28. and so exposure therapy has also helped a lot. yeah. like actually being where the trauma occurred really unpack something for the mind. i think one of the reasons why people love solito is because it is such an intimate, personal story. so much about, you know, a child. but i think other thing i said is that and we have to realize, right, there are thousands of habits, right now there and

leaves and there will be sadly shifts in that changing and that that's the reason why i decided to write the book kids because i was like a in my opening i dedicate the opening to a child who's been trafficked guatemalan girl who i meet in the airport in mcallen who is being trafficked she sent who knows what had been in a cage and and this to me the it's the horror. right. i think this is the horror of what i'm living through. like literally right now, which is and it involves all of you. and that's why the work that lee does and, what harvey does is so important right, is that it is happening today and it fascinates me. how we will then you know, buy your book, make it a bestseller here. these book written about talked about on npr and all of that. it is not pasando and it's the moment. it's right here in the trauma,

the suffering, the separation and the, you know, possibility, hypothermia. and it's not that i have a question, but i have to tell you, i because i'm doing some deep investigative reporting on the continue all sexual assault that happens in every immigrant detention camp every hour across the country in camps right here where i visited yesterday. and the fact that just getting worse in the will, the only way it is, you, not me, you actually. and i'm really that's why i'm so thankful to be here with such powerful people. by the way, el salvador, like the salvadoran reality form to me as a young revolutionary college, formed me news for me and the vietnamese experience of lee's family.

and that legacy also formed me. so we are each other. we are actually each. and so until we realize of what's happening right now, it's going to, as you said his lobby or they're going to it will keep on happening now you have a face i think i think that is the important part like now now you that kid that kid is me but that kid is every kid you know now you know lee, if you read about lee's experience, you have a face, you know? and i think that's just beginning of empathy and it's sad that we that's where we are at. but now, you know, one of us and maybe changes some things, because actually what we have to do is we to deconstruct the false narrative that has been constructed about us. and that's the beauty the work of lee and have yet and of course my dear who's basically

standing there saying you know it's time to wrap up because i was like, i have another 10 minutes and she's like, no, you don't. we don't have another 10 minutes, right. okay. but this was fabulous. so please join me in a round of. okay, well, that's nice segue. well, nice. thank you. miami by this by that book by my friend please support authors and just know what a special event you have here in miami every year. congratulations. thank you for having us. thank you. the authors be signing books just all the way at the end of the hall. this session is concluded and the next will