Natalie,

No, your idea is not hare-brained Arturo already has a file called "Poems and Cuentos" that is for poems so far, but I'm sure he could open another file for "Immigrants' Stories". I love to read such stories. It fleshes out for me what the stories of my own immigrant ancestors might have been being that I never knew any but my father and he never talked about his experiences during the Revolution in Mexico and the trip to the US or his early years here.

I was born in Colorado in 1939 and raised in California, so I don't have the family knowledge that some of the other members have. My mother was American/Nuevo Mexican/Tewa and we were immersed in that culture that had existed there for 400 years and they considered my father's relatives "foreign newcomers". They were always talking about their ancestors, and my father never got a word in edgewise, nor did he want to. He would just shake his head and complain later about the archaic Spanish dialect they spoke that had not kept up with modern Castellan as spoken in Mexico. He was always correcting my mother's Spanish and ours, and as a result, I stopped trying to speak Spanish. He didn't allow us make-up or bright colors, either. I think he would have loved to have seen us at home only or wearing black rebozos on our heads when we went out. He was very provincial.

Since Ancestry.com came out with the Border Crossings database, I have found so much to flesh out some of the story of my father's people. In the Border Crossing database, and Historical Newspapers, and Obituaries, and WWI and WWII Registrations I have learned so much about my immigrant ancestors who are all gone now. For instance, I did not know that before settling in Colorado for 25 years, they had first gone to Mogollon, NM or to Glazier TX in the early part of the 20th C. and both of those are now ghost towns. I wonder what they did there, what life was like (pretty rough, I imagine, but with family around, it was bearable).

A really good story about one family's saga of immigration and what drove some people to leave Mexico is a book called, "Rain of Gold" by Victor Villasenor. I also have a book called "Como Viven Los Mexicanos en los Estados Unidos" published privately in Mexico in the 1920s that my husband's aunt gave me almost 50 years ago.

So, it is a good idea, Natalie. I look forward to hearing everyone's stories.

Emilie
Port Orchard, WA---
----- Original Message -----
From: nc_coleman
To: general@lists.nuestrosranchos.org
Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2007 1:02 PM
Subject: [Nuestros Ranchos] Immigrant stories

Is there a collection of immigration/immigrant stories here on the NUESTROS RANCHOS page/site? (If so, how do I go about finding them?) Stories of how an ancestor or parent migrated to the U.S.; how and when did they travel?; why did they come to the U.S.?; how long did it take?; did they come alone or in a group?; where in the U.S. did they eventually settle?
I think it would be interesting to compare and contrast the immigrant stories. (Or is this just a hare-brained idea??)

Natalie in VA