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:

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.