Kenia Calderon: Many Women, Many Leaders

grew up in Chicago, Illinois, a beautiful city surrounded by violence and controversy by the media. I found things more simple when I was kid growing up here, there wasn't much to worry about but as I got older things became more complex here. The sounds of the " L "' or as you know it as, The Train, and the roaring sounds of cars passing by my house made me feel alive while growing up and as a matter of fact still does. You could wake up in the morning and see the vibrant blue skies being pierced by the skyscrapers and see other kids playing ball or riding their bikes. When it was summer time I would play ins sprinklers or go downtown and play in the fountains with my family. Of course, like most big cities I had to watch my back while growing up because you never knew what somebody was up to. It's weird really growing up here because you never know what's going to happen next , wether it's a good thing or a bad thing. All I can really say about growing up in Chicago is that if I had the chance to redo it, I'd do if a million times.

On September 4, 1999, I was born in Victoria Jubilee hospital in Kingston, Jamaica. My family comes from the inner city of a country that is poverty stricken, politically corrupt, with an excessive murder rate. Despite the many flaws, I was taught to love my culture and respect others. My family came to America to have a better opportunity in life.

My move from South Korea to the United States was to this day the hardest, most stressful event of my whole entire life. At the age of six, I gave up the comfort of my friends, culture, and home to move to a country halfway across the world. Korea was everything I knew and loved. Having never set foot outside of the country, all my dreams and aspirations were set in Korea. Although I was a fickle child and my goals changed constantly, they all were intertwined with Korea. I was going to become a pianist in Korea and teach piano to students. Another time, I decided I was going to become a math teacher at the school I was attending. My view of the world was limited, but I was happy in my familiar, safe place. My move to America changed my whole perspective.

I was born and raised in Colombia, a South American country surrounded by a huge diversity of cultures united by one language, the Spanish. However, since I was 1 year old I traveled to the United States every summer and sometimes Christmas for vacation, family and parent’s business.

Taking a gender woman study class gave me the opportunity to discover how woman do not only fight for their rights but for everyones right as well. In Mary Pardo’s Mexican American Women and Grassroots Community Activists: Mothers of East Los Angeles, I was able to learn how woman fight for their communities rights and try their hardest to protect everyone and not just themselves. Michelle Jacob’s article Claiming Health and Culture as a Human Rights: Yakama Feminism in Daily Practice also shows how woman become agents of change to bring change into the community. As I kept reading various articles, I also discovered Lila Abu-Lughod. “The Romance of Resistance: Tracing Transformations of Power Through Bedouin Women.” which focused on working towards woman rights. The last article I will talk

My dad was born in the small Central American nation of El Salvador, more specifically in Anamoros located on the east side of the country. He lived in the countryside so he often played with their animals, spent most of his childhood swimming in the rivers or playing soccer with his friends, and would frequently hang out with his grandparents in the afternoons. In 1980, when he was about 12 years old that all began to change, he and all those around him needed to be more cautious about their surroundings.

Kenia Calderon has been an active leader since 2013, when she became vocal about her lack of legal status to improve the lives of the undocumented youth in Des Moines. Over the last four years, she has met undocumented high schoolers to motivate and guide them as they navigate the higher education system. Her fight for civil rights include fighting for low income families to have access financial institutions, access to higher education, and standing with street vendors as they fought for their rights at the city level. Kenia has lobbied for different causes that affect the most vulnerable in our city. She lobbied for credit unions to not be regulated like banks because these financial institutions have efforts around serving the unbanked

According to ("Meet Loretta - Loretta Sanchez," 2016), she has represented the state of California in Congress for the past 19 years. She also holds senior positions on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee. Sanchez is recognized as a strong leader on military and security issues. Additionally, she currently serves as the ranking member of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee, where she works to prepare the Armed Forces for a new generation of security challenges. She is also a member of the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, where she makes sure that the nation is appropriately prepared for any missile or nuclear attacks. Moreover, Sanchez advocated for female service members to serve in combat roles and she fought to stop sexual assaults from happening in the armed forces. She successfully passed a long-shot bill that updated the sexual assault provisions in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, as well as a bill to create a sexual assault database.

In the year of 1990 my father and his family crossed the border to get to California to have a better life . My father's family was poor in Mexico, there were no jobs or enough money to keep the family from starving. My grandfather suggested that my father and his siblings should get to California to have a fresh start in life and not live in poverty anymore. My father knew how difficult and life risking it would be to cross the border, so he started to plan things out in how he was going to get to california.

After a short while, it became a bit of a family tradition to take trips down to the sandy beaches of Mexico, and see what new things we could discover. Yet, that wasn't enough for my father, so when I turned eight, my parents sold everything, bought a sailboat, and we moved aboard. Having grown up abroad, seeing new people, learning how to speak Spanish, adapting to new cultures, my childhood overseas has given me the chance to see the earth from a whole new perspective.

I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota to two immigrants from Liberia. Both my mother and my father are from there. My father came much earlier than my mom and when they met, fell in love, got married, and had me. I never asked my father what made him come here; my mother came due to the escalation of the civil war that gripped the county.

To begin with, I was born in a small country called Ecuador. Yes, Ecuador, not equator. I was born and raised in a Latino household where much of the world was hidden from me. That was until the age of 8 when my mom decided that it was the best to take me with her to an unknown, at that time, land. It was about a year later that I found out I was in the United States. Crazy, right? What can I say, I was a very naive child.

When you look and read the book cover and back cover of this collection of poems, you instantly think of the visions of poems and the strength and activism of this woman. In the whole course from the beginning to the end of this book, this collection enforces the beauty and the fierce character of the author, as I will try to show you in this essay. It also brings to life past, present, and possible future of the women presented by Sonia Sanchez.

I’m an immigrant. I was born in Mexico and it was only until my parents decided to come to the United States that I am where I am. My mother tried to cross the border to come to the United States for the first time when I was still in her womb all by herself as my father was already in the Unites States working in order to provide for her in the way that he wasn’t able to do so by staying in Mexico. My mother was caught by immigration and was sent back. My mother was very disappointed because she knew that if she didn’t get me to the United States some way or another I wouldn’t get very far in life by staying in Mexico. My father returned back to Mexico when I was born and it wasn’t until I was 4 years old that they decided to try to cross the border once again. Although I was only 4 years old I remember the whole experience as if it was yesterday. The amount of fear of getting caught by immigration and having done everything for nothing was always in the back of my mind while going through the whole experience. Up to this day nothing has ever been as terrifying and nerve-wrecking as having to go through that whole experience especially for a 4 year old child but I will forever be grateful for the bravery and strength that my parents had to gather in

As a child, my family was always on the move. We lived in Fresno, Bakersfield, Oakland, Daly City, San Francisco and Yemen. My parents are from Yemen, but I was born here, in 2010 we flew out to visit the country and see my grandma. However, what was meant to be a summer vacation became a three year stay.