The Smell of Old Lady Perfume by Claudia Guadalupe Martinez

It is estimated that by 2065 nearly 20 percent of the population will be foreign born.Īs such, this really is a universal story that could be happening at any moment in time. And still, people continue to come-not just from Mexico but everywhere in the world. It resulted in half as many visas for the entire American hemisphere as there had been for Mexicans alone in the past. In 1965, the Hart-Celler Act set a limit on immigration from the American hemisphere for the first time in U.S. About 500,000 Mexicans continued to enter the U.S. Some U.S.-born kids had refused to leave and stayed behind with relatives.

But despite the removal of 2 million people and the clear message that Mexicans weren’t welcomed, the Mexican American and Mexican population in the U.S. The border has been fluid for the larger part of history.ĭuring Mexican Repatriation, many families left the US in order to stay together. According to my Apá’s tía Pepa, my grandmother was part of a whole generation born on the US side who grew up in Mexico. Were they coming or leaving? For people like many in my own family, it’s never quite been one or the other. Likewise, I wanted the family’s destination to be ambiguous. One of the things I decided right away was that the narrator of Still Dreaming / Seguimos soñando should never come right out and say this story was about “repatriation.” This is because I wanted the story to be something that could be happening at any moment in time. When I stumbled on it on social media, I couldn’t get it out of my head and eventually started working on this book. I never learned about Mexican Repatriation in school, even though it’s U.S.

The Smell of Old Lady Perfume by Claudia Guadalupe Martinez