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For him, the logic went something like: I was Latino and male and not a cripple, therefore I should play soccer.
The truth was that I didn’t know which I was. I wasn’t allowed to claim the thing I felt and I didn’t feel the thing I was supposed to claim.
But one beach isn’t every beach. And one home isn’t every home. And I think we all sensed, standing there, just how far we were from where we had come, in ways both good and bad. “It’s beautiful,” my mom said, staring out at the ocean. She sighed and shook her head. “This country.”
Sleep was like wealth, elusive and for other people.
which made her seem a little like a caged bird who no one trusted to fly.
That’s how it works. Americans can handle one person from anywhere. They had Desi Arnaz from Cuba. And Tin Tan from México. And Rita Moreno from Puerto Rico. But as soon as there are too many of us, they throw up their hands. No, no, no! We were only just curious. We are not actually interested in you people.
and I felt the way I often felt in this country—simultaneously conspicuous and invisible, like an oddity whom everyone noticed but chose to ignore.
When someone dies, it doesn’t leave a hole, and that’s the agony.
