In October, 2015, Youth Circulations ran a post by Julie C. Keller: "Beyond Trump: America's Dairyland and Multiple Regimes of Mobility." Still in the early stages of the campaign, it was easy to consider, and perhaps hope, that the options Keller presented –"[W]e could write off Donald Trump as merely a celebrity candidate pursuing a theatrical campaign for notoriety. We could refuse to engage with his platform" –would remain just that. With Trump's impending inauguration, however, we no longer have these options. Still, and perhaps even moreso, we remain committed to Keller's broader argument:
“...When we set Trump’s fiery rhetoric against the narratives of migrants, we see an even more complicated relationship between inclusion and exclusion—particularly when it comes to mobility.”
At a time when there is a lot of talk about talk –harassment, "post-truth," tweets, "Trump talk"– we choose to keep presenting counter-narratives that illuminate lived, restricted, foreclosed, and resisted mobilities. Recognizing the power of so many other voices, we are honored to present the work of Salvador Jiménez-Flores. Salvador is presently the Artist-In-Residence for the City of Boston and the Harvard Ceramics Program, and he is also a visiting lecturer at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Wheelock College. Of his work, he writes:
I did not grow up wanting to be an artist until I migrated to the United States. I never thought that art was a necessity in my life, since there were many other more crucial needs such as food and shelter for my family. At first, art was merely a way of coping with the transition, but later due to my limited English, art became my tool for self-expression. Our nation is currently echoing messages of hate, xenophobia, racism, oppression and inequality. During times like this, it is clear to me how art can become a mechanism to create awareness and purpose actions through powerful images.
As I reflect back to the time when I created “Reflections of an Uncertain Dream”, it is a bitter-sweet moment. I was personally struggling with the emotions of feeling unwelcome in my new “home” and lacking of a sense of belonging. This is a shared feeling with many new immigrants and the broken immigration system we have had for decades.
