Harvard University

When I first came to this country, I knew not a word of English. My mother’s diligent (and successful) efforts to teach me to read since birth suddenly dissolved in the face of American preschoolers who could not understand my Spanish. The situation was simple to this teary-eyed toddler: walls, in the form of language and cultural barriers, defined my new American life. The walls of our home in Mexico City were the color of maize, not the dingy gray of our Houston apartment. Yet as most children do, I quickly grew fluent in the new language. Still the grayness of the walls persisted. I built…