I'm one of the few children of incarcerated people to make it to college. It doesn't have to be this way.
. Today, as a student at Columbia University hoping to become a lawyer, I am ready to be our advocate. I want to inspire criminal justice reform in order to alleviate the system’s lasting impacts on families of the incarcerated.1991. She brought with her an eighth grade education and pennies but also daring eyes full of dreams. America quickly humbled her. She ended up working long shifts as a cashier at a Chevron station.When she got home, she’d tell me all about the customers who came in.
“An A? Why not an A-plus?” she would ask me after my teacher returned a test. I didn’t understand what the big deal was. Now, as I look back, I know that Mom’s toughness was motivated by love. She taught me that I didn’t have room for error; I had to work twice as hard as my white, affluent peers to be taken seriously. It is thanks to Mom that I am still a proud academic perfectionist.Mom is, and has always been, my beloved. As she began to struggle with addiction, when I was just 12, I made sure she was fed and cared for. But I knew what she really needed was something I couldn’t give her: rehabilitation.
As my sisters and I moved from foster home to foster home, Mom lived with my grandpa, where her addiction intensified—and made her the perfect “criminal,” as far as police were concerned. They stopped Mom one day, searched her, found a screwdriver in her purse, assumed it was a weapon, and whisked her off to jail.
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