Thread by @hexican

American Dirt, as most of you already know focus on a Mexican woman who looks to cross into the United States. She does so by using coyotes and riding the bestia-a train packed with other hopeful likes her. (1)

She does this because the writer couldn't fathom anything but the same old stereotypes about undocumented and their struggles. It has to be the same old version Hollywood has thrown at us for years.

But there are countless of immigrant stories. Like my aunt Olivia's.(2)

My aunt was born in Veracruz,in a little town called Cerro Gordo. She was the youngest of 8.

Here you can see here in overalls with the rest of her sisters and brothers, along with my grandma and grandpa. (3)

Grandpa left not too long after this picture. Or maybe he'd already left and came back for a visit. But either way, my grandma raised those eight kids, with each of the kids pitching in (my dad worked as a caddy from when he was 11 until college)(4)

Slowly they made the whole family made the way to Mexico D.F. My dad went to University and met my mom. Aunt Olivia also went to school, and celebrate her Quinceañera(5)

My mom and dad got married, and shortly afterward my brother and I were born. Due to both of them still working, it fell on my aunt to look after us when they were at work.

Here we are. Tell me I wasn't damn adorable as a baby. (6)

She helped to raise us as much as my mom and dad did. I was told (multiple times) how she would get up in the middle of the night when were crying, or how she would get up extra early to feed us and then go off to school. (7)

She graduated from college with a degree in business and also learn Portuguese. She worked at Mexican law firm.

Here she is looking fucking tough. (8)

By that time, my mom and dad had moved us to the United States.

But every summer, my brother and I would return to Mexicp to spend time with my aunt and grandma. We would often take a small trip down to Cerro Gordo, where we still had family (9)

Around the time I entered high school, we stopped going to Mexico, something I always regret.

Around the same time though, my aunt decided she wanted to visit the U.S, so she came on a visitor visa. (10)

Her visa expired but she stayed, first with us, then on her own. She worked every job she could find, and before long, met someone. They moved to Dallas, where she started her own cleaning business. She bought a house. Helped paid for her husbands truck. (11)

When I moved to Dallas, she allowed me to stay in her house for the first sixth months. A couple of years later, when I was doing my student teaching (and not getting paid) she again let me stay in her house. She always joked she didn't need kids of her own as we were her's (12)

She became a citizen not long after, going through the entire process on her own. Having gone through the process myself a few years later, I can't imagine how she navigated the bureaucracy of it all by herself. But she did.(13)

Then she found our her husband cheated on her.

She didn't hesitate. She left him, left Dallas, left the clients and her business and moved to El Paso, Texas. Where she had to start her life all over. But she did! Bought a house. Bought a car she loved. Adopted a dog. (14)

It was around this time that she felt a lump by her ear. Cancer.

They gave her six months.

(FUCK CANCER BY THE WAY) (15)

The news didn't stop her. She continued living. She took trips, made friends. Met her recently born nephew. (16)

At the end, she stayed with us for over two years.
She passed away a little over a year ago, back in Mexico, surrounded by her sisters and brothers.
I miss her every day. (17)

When I was trying to think of a name for the main character of TURISTAS- a tough woman with a wicked sense of humor, I immediately decided on Olivia.

I think she would have liked that. Or called me a pinche chamaco.