Cristina Jiménez is an award-winning community organizer and a leading voice in movements for social justice. She is Co-Founder and former Executive Director of United We Dream, the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the country. A Distinguished Lecturer at the City University of New York, Jimenez is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and was included on TIME‘s 100 Most Influential People List in 2018. She came to the US from Ecuador in 1998 and grew up undocumented in Queens, New York. Her new book is Dreaming of Home: How We Turn Fear Into Pride, Power, and Real Change.
Book Festival Author
Cristina Jiménez
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Dreaming of Home: How We Turn Fear into Pride, Power, and Real Change
"Dreaming of Home" is a coming-of-age story both for a young woman finding her true self and for a social movement of immigrant youth trailblazers who inspired the world and changed the lives of millions.
Cristina Jiménez’s family fights to stay afloat as Ecuador falls into a political and economic crisis. When she is thirteen, her parents courageously decide to seek a better life in the U.S., landing in a one-bedroom apartment in Queens, New York. There are many challenges, but eventually, Cristina discovers she is not alone; she finds her calling within a community of social justice organizers. With deep candor and humor, Cristina opens the door to what it’s like to grow up undocumented and the reality that being a “good” immigrant doesn’t shield you from systematic racism, danger, or even the confusion of falling in love.
Through personal stories and historical truth telling, Cristina invites us to acknowledge the America that never was and to imagine the America that could be when everyday people build power and fight for change. And she reminds us that home is more than a physical place on the map, offering each of us a roadmap for finding the home within even when the world around us seems to be crumbling.
