Erminia was a senior in high school in Washington, DC when she wrote Voces Sin Fronteras. She is from El Salvador. She participates in a lot of leadership programs. In the future, she would like to be an immigration lawyer.
Erminia era en el último año de la escuela secundaria en Washington, DC cuando escribía Voces Sin Fronteras. Ella es de el Salvador. Ella participa mucho en programas de liderazgo. En el futuro, le gustaría ser una abogada de inmigración.
BOOKS BY ERMINIA / LIBROS POR ERIMINIA
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During the summer of 2017, Shout Mouse Press held a month-long workshop with LAYC's Latino Youth Leadership Council (LYLC), a passionate group of young people dedicated to social justice in their community. The workshop, led by a team of teaching artists with experience devising and illustrating comic books, resulted in a graphic memoir collection by Latinx youth that inspires, motivates, and educates its readers, and that changes the narrative about America's immigrants. Learn More
Personal accounts of 16 young Latin American immigrants told as side-by-side pen-and-ink bilingual comics.The comic strips and accompanying short bios in Spanish and English came about through an initiative by the Latin American Youth Center in Washington, D.C. The compelling stories shared by these students, all members of the Latino Youth Leadership Council and active in the fight for social justice, signal their desire to serve as beacons or lifelines for other young immigrants. Their testimonies, as Newbery Medal winner Meg Medina (Merci Suárez Changes Gears, 2018, etc.) points out in her foreword, are ultimately about courage. The courage needed to leave behind the familiarity of their home environments—El Salvador, Cuba, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala—is evident throughout, as the stories showcase the many reasons migrants have for coming to the U.S., including seeking better opportunities, fleeing violence, and reuniting with family after years of painful separation. The young authors don't shy away from tough subjects: There are descriptions of grief, cultural dislocation, cutting, and a suicide attempt. The format doesn't allow for thorough explorations of the root causes for migration, but the emphasis is on the hopeful and positive paths these young adults have forged. The editorial decision to retain "authentic student voices" in the essays means that some of the writing was not revised, and reflects the code switching and language loss that come with the disruption of lives and education.Enlightening and inspiring #ownvoices accounts by young activists.
-Kirkus Reviews
'Voces sin Fronteras' is a graphic novel-style book of 32 short stories documenting hardships Latinx Immigrants faced in their home countries, as well as in the United States.
Ranging from the loss of family members who leave home for a better life, whether for employment or educational opportunities or to be closer to family members, they are the true stories of people who participated in the Latino Youth Leadership Council, part of the Columbia Heights-base nonprofit organization, the Latin American Youth Center (LAYC).
"Issues about immigration and its impact on families have been prominent in the current US political scene, with a gross amount of injustice and racism cast toward many people seeking asylum. This book is an excellent entry into this political conversation, with sixteen true accounts from the lives of young people who have come over from Latin American countries to live and find a better life in the United States. These adolescents are the Latino Youth Leadership Council of the Washington DC-based Latin American Youth Center, founded in 1968.”
The other day I arrived home to find waiting in the mailbox a weighty, Voces Sin Fronteras: Our Stories Our Truth. It proved not only weighty to the hand, but once I began peeling its pages back, weighty to the soul.
ISBN: 978-1945434921
by the Latino Youth Leadership Council of LAYC
With a foreword by Newbery Medal-winning author Meg Medina
Winner of the 2019 'In the Margins' Top Nonfiction award.
Starred review in School Library Journal.
"Enlightening and inspiring #ownvoices accounts by young activists." – Kirkus Review.
Learn more about the project here.
During a time of heated immigration debate and unrest, this book is an opportunity to hear directly from youth who are often in the headlines but whose stories don’t get told in full. Sixteen young people from the Latin American Youth Center (LAYC) in Washington, D.C. came together to tell their own stories of immigration and transformation in comics form. The result is this side-by-side bilingual collection of graphic memoirs that not only builds connections across language, but also breaks down barriers and expands hope.
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En tiempos de inquietud y acalorados debates sobre la inmigración, este libro representa una oportunidad para escuchar directamente a los jóvenes quienes suelen ocupar los titulares en la prensa, pero cuyas historias no se alcanzan a narrar por completo. Dieciséis jóvenes del Latin American Youth Center (LAYC) en Washington, D.C. se unieron para contar sus propias historias de inmigración y de transformación en formato de cómic. El resultado es esta colección de memorias gráficas bilingüe, que no sólo construye conexiones entre los idiomas, sino que también elimina barreras y abre un espacio a la esperanza.
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