When Alondra Angelica Alvarez Ortiz was seven years old, her family moved from Mexico to the U.S. She spent every night thereafter crying herself to sleep—she missed her little hometown of Gomez Palacio, visiting her tia’s snack cart after school and dressing up in a long traditional skirt and bright red lipstick to celebrate Mexico’s Independence Day. She didn’t understand America, with lines down the middle of the roads and lack of people in the back of pickups. She also didn’t understand the “better life” her mother insisted she would have here, for which she sacrificed so much. How could a society so fixated on working and money be better than her simple and carefree Gomez?