Episode 3: I Was Made for the Light
Nicholas Kristof reads the story of Reydesel Salvidrez-Rodriguez
Musical Guest Arturo O’Farrill responds
Nicholas Kristof is an American journalist and political commentator. A winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, he is a regular CNN contributor and writes an op-ed column for The New York Times. He reads the story of Reydesel Salvidrez-Rodriguez, a legally deaf undocumented young man who was on the verge of killing himself before the DACA program was created that gave temporary legal status to undocumented young people brought to the U.S. before age 16 by their parents.
Guests
Nicholas Kristof
Nicholas Kristof has been a columnist for The New York Times since 2001. He grew up on a farm in Oregon, graduated from Harvard, studied law at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and then studied Arabic in Cairo. He was a longtime foreign correspondent for The New York Times and speaks various languages. Mr. Kristof has won two Pulitzer Prizes for his coverage of Tiananmen Square and the genocide in Darfur, along with many humanitarian awards such as the Anne Frank Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
Arturo O’Farrill
Arturo O’Farrill: Pianist, composer, and educator, Arturo O’Farrill, was born in Mexico and grew up in New York City. His professional career began with the Carla Bley Band and continued as a solo performer with a wide spectrum of artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Bowie, Wynton Marsalis, and Harry Belafonte. Arturo’s well-reviewed and highly praised “Afro-Latin Jazz Suite” from the album CUBA: The Conversation Continues (Motéma) took the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition and the 2016 Latin Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz Album. His powerful “Three Revolutions” from the album Familia-Tribute to Chico and Bebo was the 2018 Grammy Award (his sixth) winner for Best Instrumental Composition.
Reydesel Salvidrez-Rodríguez
Reydesel Salvidrez-Rodríguez migrated to the U.S. with his family from Mexico at the age of 10 and has been living in Denver for the last 17 years. Despite being legally deaf and undocumented, Salvidrez graduated from the University of Colorado of Denver (CU Denver), where he majored in Communications and Ethnic Studies. He was the first Undocumented Senator for the CU Denver Student Government Association. He tells the story of his despair and hope.
Full Episode Transcript
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Kirsten (00:09):
From Motus Theater, welcome to the Shoebox Stories podcast where we invite you to stand in someone else's shoes. I'm Motus' artistic director, Kirsten Wilson.
Kirsten (00:20):
For our first podcast series UndocuAmerica, Motus ask a prominent American to stand in the shoes of an undocumented person by reading aloud their story, saying their words and holding, for a moment, the weight that they carry. By reading the story handed to them in the studio, the reader is not saying they agree with everything written. They are simply agreeing to suspend judgment and feel the impact as they, word by word, experience the world through another's eyes.
Kirsten (01:10):
Our guest reader is Nicholas Kristof, the Pulitzer Prize winning Op-Ed writer for the New York Times and CNN commentator.
Nicholas (01:18):
The problem with our immigration policy and so many policies is that we don't think of them in terms of flesh and blood. We think of them in terms of uh policies and it's very easy to create discriminatory policies.
Kirsten (01:31):
He will be reading the story of Reydesel Salvidrez Rodriguez, a legally deaf undocumented college graduate who shares how he went from suicidal to success. After the DACA program was created in 2012, they gave temporary legal status to undocumented people brought to the US as children. After the reading and reflection, we have a musical response to Reydesel's story from Grammy winning Afro-Latin jazz musician and composer, Arturo O'Farrill. But first, Nicholas Kristof reading Reydesel Salvidrez Rodriguez's autobiographical story, "I Was Born For The Light."
Nicholas (02:10):
"Can you hear me? Come closer. Listen to my story. Imagine living in a lonely, cold world where you cannot see anything around you but dark shadows moving in the distance. There's no hope. No future. Nothing to plan ahead. You have nightmares of being taken from your family and sent into exile. You have learned to think of yourself as an illegal. Something that is shameful. Something that does not belong and you fear that you are the only one.
Nicholas (02:54):
The other students are talking, laughing, preparing for their lives, choosing colleges but you are not invited. You don't have a social security number. You cannot apply. You seek guidance. "Help." You say, "I'm a good student. I want to continue into college. I'll work hard. I've overcome the challenge of being deaf and now I have a dream." But the guidance counselor interrupts to silence you. "I'm sorry but there's nothing I can do. You are an illegal."
Nicholas (03:37):
You try to follow as your friends continue onto college but with no option for financial aid, no scholarships available, you don't even have money for one semester. So you must drop out. You can't tell your friends you're undocumented. You lie and tell them you're not ready for college. You get off social media so you don't have to see their happy faces. Their talk of classes and careers. Little by little, you slowly disappear until they forget about you.
Nicholas (04:19):
All your life, you've strived to be good, to stay out of trouble, to make your parents proud. You've resisted joining a gang, even though they promised the loneliness would end if you would just join them. But now, you have to buy a social security number on the black market to get a job. You are becoming what you fear. Your body is being poisoned from the lies you must tell people to survive and to protect yourself. It's starting to destroy you from the inside. There's no escape. You are illegal. No matter how hard you work, you are still illegal. A prisoner in the free world, you are still illegal.
Nicholas (05:17):
You feel the heavy weight of chains. Are you a criminal or a slave? For you, being undocumented is a curse. You hate being Mexican. You hate your parents and, most of all, you hate yourself. And every day that your dreams die, the chains get heavier and heavier. You can't feel yourself anymore. When you accidentally injure yourself at the construction site where you work, you're surprised to feel pain. It has been so long since you felt anything.
Nicholas (06:05):
At night, you pour alcohol into the wounds on your hands and watch yourself burn. You feel less lonely with your body on fire than numb in the cold. And then you decide you will kill yourself. But that thought cut so deep. The pain you will cause your mother, your father. Some light at the bone of your existence says, "You cannot die. Maybe you're life is over but your siblings are American citizens. You will help them study. Help them get a drivers license. Help them get to college. Everything you could not have. There is some light. You become one of the many undocumented laborers living to support the dreams of another.
Nicholas (07:14):
And then, your mother calls. Obama has given you papers. Obama has created DACA. How can the words of a president you've never met, who's never met you, save your life? I sign up for DACA and college in the same week. I find beautiful people at the college, members and dreamers united. I am no longer alone but surrounded by other students who walk the same path. They show me their scars and the marks from their chains. I see the tears and motivation in their eyes. I see them graduating, becoming doctors, lawyers, educators, teachers, community organizers and becoming my friends. I start fighting for institutional change, creating student organizations on campus, marching in the streets. I run for student government and I, an undocumented legally deaf first generation college student, I win.
Nicholas (08:56):
I look down at where the chains once were and I see a torch in my hand. I am not an illegal. I am not. That was a lie. The lie that created all the lies that pulled me into darkness. I am not an illegal. My name, Reydesel, has it's ancestral root in 'rey de sol' or king of the sun. I was made for the light and no human being is illegal on these stolen lands.
Nicholas (09:35):
Listen. You who are afraid. I know your fear. You who have no hope, who are so deep in hiding that you have lost even yourself. You can win the battle with the shadows. The nightmares can stop and go away. You are not alone. Your arms were not meant for chains but for freedom, for joy and to dream again. Your voices were not meant to be silent but to stand up and fight back. On behalf of you, my community, my ancestors, my parents, my siblings and myself, I stand in a full light and call out, "My name is Reydesel Salvidrez Rodriguez. I am undocumented, unashamed, unafraid and unapologetic. Welcome to my brilliant, shining, beautiful life."
Kirsten (10:56):
Beautiful. And now, Nick, could you tell Reydesel what it was like to read his story?
Nicholas (11:10):
One of the things that strikes me reading it is how you have a story of marginalization, of self doubt, uh of disempowerment, that ends up being about empowerment. It ends up being about success and thriving and finding a better avenue. (laughs) One doesn't expect to come up with a uplifting story, uh and yet that's exactly what you wrote on paper and in your life. So thank you for that.
Nicholas (11:50):
I mean I think one of the challenges is that a lot of Americans see immigrants through the prism of burden and I think you very clearly underscore that one can also see immigration through the prism of asset and that's, that's, that's what immigrants are, national assets.
Nicholas (12:14):
My dad was a refugee from World War II and I think of the fact that he was able to come to the US and was welcomed and was greeted and was sponsored by a uh a church that paid his passage, that then found him work for a year that guaranteed his expenses and there was a sense of hospitality there that was transformative, not only for him but of course for our, our family and I, you know, I, I worry that that, that we've lost that and that we've gone from that hospitality towards immigrants refugees, to a sense of dehumanization.
Kirsten (12:58):
Nick, before you read Rey's story, he read his own story directly to you. What was that like?
Nicholas (13:05):
I'd read it but it becomes, um, flesh and blood in this context uh when you hear it and I think that indeed the problem with our immigration policy and so many policies is that we don't think of them in terms of flesh and blood, we think of them in terms of policies and it's very easy to create discriminatory policies toward a group of people. Like we have this natural tendency to otherwise people and I think the way to fight that is to um have a real person tell their real story and uh that's, that's certainly what emerged here.
Kirsten (13:44):
And you, Reydesel. What was it like to have your story read back to you by Nicholas Kristof?
Reydesel (13:47):
I felt the emotional coming out when you reading it and being, being the listener now, I can feel... I picture my life all over again, almost 10 years ago, high school.
Nicholas (14:00):
There's a lot of emotion tapped in there.
Reydesel (14:02):
I think you find my emotion has changed from darkness to light, sadness to happy and it, it was happy finding a community heping eachother and I know me and my other friend, we started [inaudible 00:14:16] United and, um, we both graduated.
Nicholas (14:18):
Congratulations.
Reydesel (14:20):
Thank you.
Nicholas (14:20):
Quite a milestone.
Kirsten (14:21):
I would love to take a moment and breathe together and see if there's any last words to be said before we end and I play Arturo O'Farrill's musical response.
Reydesel (14:32):
My heart right now is with the undocuments who are living in the shadows and thinking about this is gonna be hope. There's a community that supports us, no matter what happen today and tomorrow. We will still be this, doing this together and striving to do better and proving that we are not, we're not alone in this fight. We have a, a big community that love us, would do anything for us and fight until there's justice and just remember self-care. That's it.
Nicholas (15:08):
I would just say, just it strikes me that 140 years ago, we would of had a conversation, it would have been Irish Catholics who were demonized and marginalized and in the 1930's, it might have been European Jews. In the early 1940's, it might have been Japanese Americans and we have this long history of suspicion and fear, uh, of, uh, immigrants and yet we also have this other thread of welcoming people and providing opportunities and we have certainly been better as a nation when we've figured out how to put aside those fears and welcome people and see people as individuals and your life and your graduation and your service in student government, I think, epitomize the opportunity that is there if we can rise above our baser aspects of our souls. So thank you for that.
Reydesel (16:19):
Thank you for sharing that too.
[Free Failling Borderless from the Invisible Suite by Arturo O'Farrill - sang by Young People's Chorus of New York City]
Kirsten (22:40):
That was the Young People's Chorus of New York City singing Free Falling Borderless from the Invisible Suite" by Arturo O'Farrill and featured on his album Fandango on the Wall. You can watch a video of Reydesel reading his own story on our webpage showboxstories.org or hear him read it to Nicholas Kristof on our companion podcast Motus Monologues UndocuAmerica series. We hope you will share Reydesel's story with your friends and family so everyone knows the people who's lives are at stake in US immigration policy. Next month on the Shoebox Stories UndocuAmerica series, hear the anchor and executive producer of Latino USA, Maria Hinojosa, read the story of Tanya Chairez.
Maria (23:29):
"We're all saying, "Y'all have been sleeping while we've become dehumanized.""
Kirsten (23:33):
Thank you to Nicholas Kristof, Reydesel Salvidrez Rodriguez, Arturo O'Farrill and all you listening who are willing to stand in the shoes of someone with a different experience than your own and see the world, for a moment, through their eyes. Please take good care of yourselves, those you hold dear and your neighbors, both those near and far.
We are grateful for the Motus Monologues creative team including Carlos Heredia, theme song, Anthony Salvo violin underscore, Alejandro Fuentes Mena, vocals, Robert Johnson, vocals, the podcast content editor, Motus artistic director Kirsten Wilson, technical editors Sam Glover, Douglas Reed and Matthew Simonson, the Motus Theater production team, Rita Valente Quinn, Michelle Maughan and Kiara Chavez and Motus Undocu monologist Victor Galvan, Tania Chairez, Reydesel Salvidrez Rodriguez, Laura Peniche, Kiara Chavez, Juan Juarez, Irving Reza, Cristian Solano-Córdova, Armando Peniche and Alejandro Fuentes Mena.