Poetry for the undocumented in SoCal

In the last couple of years, undocumented young people have stood up in public as never before to lobby for the Dream Act, the federal proposal that would legalize their status in the United States. While many have lost hope that the measure will ever become law, some of these teens and young adults have organized poetry readings in L.A. on Wednesday and in Santa Ana Friday to call attention to their concerns.

Jacky Acosta, 22, likes bags a lot. The plastic ones, like the ones some cities have outlawed. At a Santa Ana café she displays on a table the jewelry and other eco-friendly accessories she and her mother have created from trash.

"Some of these are from recycled newspaper bags, and recycled grocery bags," says Acosta. "And others are from recycled mylar balloons, and so what I do is cut the plastic up in strips and I crochet it."

Every bag has a story, she says. The cobalt blue bags are from clothing retailer H&M, the bags she rescued from a Jamba Juice trash can gave her a whiff of strawberries every time she’d knit them. She’s made a couple of hundred clutches, hairclips, and larger, laptop-sized bags. She's sold enough of them to help get her to graduation day at UC Irvine.

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"I graduated this June and it was just a great accomplishment because it wasn’t, they way I saw it, it wasn’t just me graduating, it was a degree for my family," she says.

Acosta is undocumented; that kept her from receiving public grants. It also shuts every door that her psychology bachelor’s degree opens. But she continues to dream. She wants to pursue a masters degree in education; she hopes her business will finance that stage of her education. If she sells a lot of bags she hopes to offer scholarships to other students like her.

In an online blog she writes about the push and pull of Mexico and the United States. The undocumented students' spoken word performance is only the second time she’ll take the stage in public. Hearing her read is like peeking into her journal.

"Two months is all I knew Mexico for. My very first two months of my existence. I have this idea that I will eventually go back to Mexico, back to my birthplace, like a salmon doe," she reads.

Acosta says she’s conceded defeat. She holds out no hope that the federal Dream Act will give her and many other undocumented students legal residency in this country.

"For myself I feel like, I can’t wait, or else I’ll never do anything. Which is not what I want, so that’s what I mean when I claim defeat," she says.

Acosta says she likes other undocumented students' writing because hearing about their struggles, fears, and hopes motivates her to carry on.