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At age 14, Luz Hernandez left her home country of Honduras to cross borders into the U.S. She was fleeing poverty, sexual abuse, and medical malpractice. The journey was harrowing and so was making a new start in the U.S. Eventually, Luz became a social worker and now offers youth and families the support she had needed when she arrived. In the second episode of our two-part series created with Voice of Witness, host Maya Rupert talks to Luz about grit and determination, hope and belonging, and why hearing directly from immigrants is crucial to understanding the topic of immigration.

This episode is created in partnership with Voice of Witness, an oral history nonprofit that advances human rights by amplifying the stories of people impacted by—and fighting against—injustice. To learn more, visit voiceofwitness.org.

You can read Luz’s full story in the Voice of Witness book “Solito, Solita,” along with the powerful oral histories of fourteen other youth refugees from Central America.

For more info about this storytelling project and others, including education resources and ways to take action, visit voiceofwitness.org and subscribe to the newsletter.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Solito, Solita:, Luz Hernandez, Maya Rupert

Maya Rupert  01:16

Hello and welcome to Good Things. I’m your host, Maya Rupert, immigration has been a hot button issue in the US for a long time. It played a huge role in this recent presidential election, and it will continue to be a part of the public discourse. But what’s often missing from these discussions is hearing from the immigrants themselves, the actual experts about their lived experience. Our guest today is Luz Hernandez. When Luz was 14, she left her home country of Honduras to cross the border into the US. She was fleeing poverty, physical and sexual abuse and medical malpractice. She shared her powerful story in the book solito Salida, crossing borders with youth refugees from Central America, which is published by the oral history nonprofit voice of witness through storytelling and taking back the narrative, Luz uses her words and story to help people understand complex issues, Counter erasure and stereotypes and support movements for justice. Luz, welcome to Good Things.

 

Luz Hernandez  02:25

Thank you. Thank you for having me here.

 

Maya Rupert  02:27

Truly, thank you so much for joining us. So I’m very eager to talk about your journey and your story and the life that you’ve made for yourself, but honestly, first I want to talk a little bit about the Bay Area, because I understand you live up there. I’m from California originally. I actually went to Berkeley for law school. You, I know you got your masters there as well. So I just wanted to start off and like, love up the bay, a little bit does is San Francisco home to you?

 

Luz Hernandez  02:54

It is. I’ve been living here for more than 13 years, so I consider San Francisco my home. I know traffic is horrible people. Some people hate it because of traffic, no parking. But yeah, I yeah, this is, I would consider, this is my home. I love the weather. I love that has a lot of places to go for hikes and walks. The Ocean Beach is really close. So I do though, go there a lot too. So it has a lot of beautiful places to visit.

 

Maya Rupert  03:24

Yeah, I truly I miss it. It was a great area, and it felt like very much one of those places where you feel like it’s a community.

 

Luz Hernandez  03:33

It does, you know, I have been working in San Francisco for so many years, so I know the community pretty well. I have also been working so much and going to school, and there’s so many cute places that I want to explore so and I started doing that.

 

Maya Rupert  03:50

Very cool. I love that, so California is actually where you first arrived when you when you got to the states, when you were 14. I want to talk a little bit about why you left, Honduras, what was going on in your life that made you know that you needed to leave. It was time to leave.

 

Luz Hernandez  04:09

Yeah, so I grew up with my with my mom. My parents got divorced when I was born. We live in this very poor community, and the person who raised me the most was my grandmother. But my grandmother sadly passed away when I was 10 years old.

 

Maya Rupert  04:29

I’m sorry.

 

Luz Hernandez  04:30

Yeah, she was, she was my world until now, I still, you know.

 

Maya Rupert  04:35

What was she like?

 

Luz Hernandez  04:38

She was, you know, when I think about my childhood, the first person that comes to my hair that taught me how to be a kind person, how to love, how to be respectful to others, she taught me so many values in that short period of time of my life to now, I see I still carry those values. She was very sweet, very gentle, hard worker. She would work three jobs in order to support my mom and her grandchildren’s very hard worker. For sure, she was very protective of me for some reason, and she was very close. And she probably, when she passed away, unfortunately, I started getting sexually abused by family members, including my step father. So her passing away was a big change in my life. It was very hard not having her around. Many things happen after that. But, yeah, I was getting sexual abuse. I was the one who had to leave the house. I started working when I was 11 years old. I got sick, misdiagnostic with lupus. I couldn’t come back to my mom’s house because that person, my stepfather, was still there. My dad was living here in the US, and he went back to Honduras, and I begged him to bring me to the US, because even though I had my sisters, I have people that I love so much there, I truly feel that I could continue living there in that environment.

 

Maya Rupert  06:18

Right, and I hear that you had to leave in order to survive, and I just before we move past this, I’m so sorry that that happened to you, and I just want to express both that but also the incredible generosity that it takes for you to tell this story. Because I think unfortunately, what we know is that this is not a unique story. It is something that happens to people, and every time someone is able to tell that story, it empowers other people. And so I just think it is so powerful that you have been willing to share this piece of your story, and I think it touches a lot of people.

 

Luz Hernandez  06:54

Thank you.

 

Maya Rupert  06:56

So you you made that, that decision to survive, to to get out of that situation. How long did it take you that journey to the US, and when you look back on those days, what are the memories that kind of stick out to you the most.

 

Luz Hernandez  07:12

The journey you know we when we think about the US you know, going back me as a teenager, I will think about the US, this amazing country where all the trains are gonna come true. And you know, I was excited, I was sad and excited at the same time, but I never thought I would be so hard. I mean, the journey is only one step to that dream, you know, that we all had, and it took 30 days to get to the US. We crossed the borders. Passed through Guatemala. El Salvador. At some point in Guatemala, these guys came and put a gun in my head, on my sisters to my dad. They, you know, search all our bodies. So that was the first traumatic experience, you know, in the trip, having a gun in your head and having a person hands and all your body searching for money, the coyote trying to separate me and my sister from my dad, witnessing people carrying a big backpack of cans and a gallon of water being exhausted or walking for days. So the journey, nobody talks about the journey, you know, that is so hard, it is very hard. And so another night, I remember myself sleeping in the desert. She was crying, you know, remembering my mother, remembering everyone behind talking to my grandmother. We always think that she’s there looking after me. And it was very emotionally and physically exhausting. And I was just told to myself, and I would talk to my sister, we almost there, we almost there, and the coyote will always tell us, oh, a couple of hours more, a couple hours more, we’re almost there, and that was just continue for days, right when we decide to come to the US, immigrate to the US. We come for many reasons, poverty, abuse, gangs, violence. It’s not a choice. It’s not an option. We have to, you know, to find ways to survive, because there’s no way to survive in our country. So issues, the journey is only one of the things that we had to go through in order to to be here and try to achieve our dreams. But once we’re here, there’s more obstacles to that, you know.

 

Maya Rupert  09:39

We’re gonna take a quick break, but we’ll be right back with more on Good Things.

 

10:08

The journey is one step, and then once you’re here, it’s not like it’s suddenly easy, right? And in a lot of ways, quite the opposite. Now, eventually you left your father’s house and you ended up in foster care. I want to play an excerpt from Solito, Solita: as read by voice actor Romina Rodriguez, it talks about your first foster care experience.

 

Solito, Solita:  12:05

So they took me to a house in Rohnert Park. It was dark, with a lot of masks and deer heads on the walls. The foster woman was from Mexico, and she was kind of old. The social worker introduced us. The foster mom said, Go to your room, and that was it. The first day she treated me well, gave me food, but after that, she barely gave me anything to eat. She made me clean the house. She put me in summer school, and I passed out three times in school because I was starving.

 

Maya Rupert  12:36

What are your memories of having gone through that the foster family, they didn’t feed you, that had to be so confusing, so scary. Can you just talk a little bit about your memories of that time?

 

Luz Hernandez  12:48

Yeah, so can you imagine, you know, coming from a different country, not knowing anything about foster care. I don’t remember a social worker or someone for the agency explaining the process of what’s going to happen, and going to the house, like a very dark house with a stranger people, and she’s been in that room, like I have. I can remember that room, you know, only like it’s more window that’s all that light that rune had. It was like I wasn’t in prison, you know, and and, and to think about like me fleeing another country and hoping to have a better future, and being in a situation where I was like starving because that person will not feed me or will not give me anything to eat during the day, and to think that she will say, this is normal. This is how foster youth get treated. And if you go to another home, you were going to be treated worse. And I believe that you know, as someone that who just recently came, you know from another country, you didn’t know anything about the system, I believe her. And I stayed quiet. I didn’t talk to anyone. I didn’t seek for help. My social worker also didn’t speak Spanish, that was a huge barrier.

 

Maya Rupert  14:03

Wow.

 

Luz Hernandez  14:04

How do you communicate? How do you seek for help? Absolutely, and you don’t know the language, you don’t know the system. You know you don’t know your rights. I didn’t know my rice. I was scared. I remember being here in that house, and now we had a friend from Hayward coming and visit me, and that person will bring me food, and my foster partner will get upset. I was not expecting that experience to be put in that situation, and I would say that that experience was one of the reasons why I decided to become a social worker.

 

Maya Rupert  14:34

Yeah, that’s incredible that you can be for someone else, the person that you needed. Now, your second foster family was better, right? What were they like? Can you talk a little bit about how you felt there?

 

Luz Hernandez  14:52

So this was a couple, and they have two sons, very friendly, very welcoming. Their was, you know, with colors. My blanket was pink with some letters. It was so beautiful, even, like the small details, you know, a lot of light, beautiful window with some beautiful cartoons. I mean, it’s just, it feel like, hon, you know. And they were so welcoming. They took the time to get to know me, like a like, how you’re doing. What do you need? Like, what do you need from us? And I think that, you know, we forget to ask the person, what do you need? The youth, because we made assumptions, oh, this person isn’t that. But then I asked them directly. So I think they did that. And I feel good, you know, feel like, okay, they want to know about me. They want to know who I am, not a number, not another child, not another foster you, but who is loose. And that make a huge difference.

 

Maya Rupert  15:51

That’s incredible. And then you became independent. When you turned 18, you left the foster care system. Can you talk a little bit about what that shift was like for you.

 

Luz Hernandez  16:03

It was a very, very scary shift, you know, living in Santa Rosa with my four star parents, having, you know, parents to be there for me, to take care of me, but I also, you know, wanted something bigger, you know, I wanted to go to a big college. I have inspirations. I wanted to go to university, and I knew that if I would stay there, I will not do that. So I decided to emancipate from the foster care and came to San Francisco, the same week that I got to San Francisco, I remember crying when I saw my foster parents leaving, and I was I would talk to myself, you got this Luz, you got this and then same week, I was able to get a job at Safeway as a full time and I was able to enroll in City College. We go to school during the day, and I would work during the night.

 

Maya Rupert  17:01

Wow.

 

Luz Hernandez  17:02

At some point, work became more important, because I needed to survive. I needed to pay rent, I needed to feed myself, pay bills. So I I was working and working and working, and I was able to find like, lower income housing, and that way, I was able to let go to one job and just have one and she’s focused in school too.

 

Maya Rupert  17:25

Now, tell me about kind of what you do now, because what you’re sort of describing this process. I know you recently got your master’s degree, right? So you clearly, you stuck with it. You got through it. Can you talk just a little bit about that process of kind of going from what you’re describing to deciding to actually go and get another degree.

 

Luz Hernandez  17:46

Yeah, I knew that I want to get to the top. I was like, Luz, we’re going to get to the top. Doesn’t matter how hard it is, but we’re going to get to the top. I was in City College for five years, taking ESL classes for three years, and then I took the regular classes for another two years, and I was able to transfer with honors. And then I transferred to San Francisco at San Francisco State University, where I got my budget by chair at those and I was able to graduate from there too. And I took a break or two, two years to focus on the work, you know, doing community work, working for the church department, helping Carlo the parents to have visits with their kids by what working there, I decided that I need to do more. I want to advocate in a different level. And I also knew that I wanted to, you know, be a social worker. You know, I had it after I moved from that place, man, I had a new social worker, and she was kind and she listened to me. So, you know, that person also inspired me to become a social worker, and to be, become a social worker, you need a master’s, and I decided to go back to school after two years. And yeah, I got into UC Berkeley, and she’s graduated last year with my master in social welfare.

 

Maya Rupert  19:03

Amazing, that’s incredible. And I mean, part of your experience is what motivated you to want to do this. How much does that show up for you now, when you’re working with kids, when you’re working with families, how often do you kind of draw upon your own experience? I imagine it would be constantly.

 

Luz Hernandez  19:21

Yeah, especially when we have on a company, company minors, you know, minors that come without their parents. And we get those cases. So those are some of the cases that I like to get, because I want to to, you know, to make the process. I mean, just being involved with child welfare is a traumatic experience for everyone you know, for the person itself, for the minor itself, for the family, for everyone. So I want to you know, when I get those cases, I try to be empathetic with the with the youth, with the minor, with the family. I can tell them, everything is going to be fine. I’m going to walk through, through the process. Someone is going to be there with you. So I can explain them the rights. You know you have the right to this and that if you need help, you can call to this number, so I’m able to you know, to things that you know that my social worker didn’t do for me. I make sure that I do it for the clients that now I’m seeing, for the families I’m working with.

 

Maya Rupert  20:19

Sure, and look, I mean, your experience gives you an expertise that there’s no degree that can ever teach, right? I mean, there is a the ability to do this job. I feel like it just has to be so impacted by everything you’ve experienced and what you know.

 

Luz Hernandez  20:36

Yeah, because of my experience, also, like I when I meet a family or a parent, when we do investigations or physical abuse or their concerns, I don’t ask the parent, what is wrong with you. I ask them, tell me more what happened. I feel that you know because of my experience, I don’t judge parents right after she’s because I read something about then about horrible things that happen. I don’t go to their home and try to, oh, my God, you’re such a bad parent. Now, what happened? Why you did that? I tried to get to know them, and I think that’s that’s things you know, that makes a huge difference when working with families and children, so I tried to be empathetic and and try to learn about their stories.

 

Maya Rupert  21:27

And it makes it so much more effective. I know that so much of the the the work of people who are doing Child Protective work is hurt by the fact that if you know someone’s going to come in and judge your family, judge your parents. People are less likely to reach out like what you’re doing is making it so that you can better serve families, which is so  important. Okay, hold tight, everyone. We’re gonna take one more quick break, and we’ll be back with moreGood Things.

 

Maya Rupert  23:47

The contours of your life are incredibly staggering, and we’ve only barely skimmed the surface, and I feel like I could talk with you forever about all of this, but I you know we’ve there’s a lot that we haven’t even gotten to explore since sort of sharing your life in the book, salita. Salita, you’ve told your story so many more times and on so many different platforms, and I wonder what originally inspired you to want to tell this story.

 

Luz Hernandez  24:17

I remember I was sitting in my English class, I was reading the underground book, which is another boys weakness book, and I remember reading about this story about this young, you know, person that came to the US and like similar to me experience a lot of you know, physical abuse, sexual abuse in the home. And I remember tearing up when I was reading that book, and I remember writing an essay about that book, and I wrote about my own experience, and Stephen, the professor we met, and he checked in with me, and I started telling him more about what happened, and it was a big. Deal for me, because in our culture and Honduras, we don’t talk about what happens in the home. We don’t talk to anyone. We just need to keep it to ourselves. And for me to disclose such a traumatic experiences, it was a it was huge. And at some moment I was scared. I was scared. I was like, oh, well, my mom is find out that I’m telling this. What if my family finds out that I’m, you know, disclosing this, I would be in trouble, or like, people will not talk to me. But I feel that at the same time, like telling my story, I needed to tell my story. You know, when you have so much pain inside and you had you hold so much and like and choose to let that out, it’s a fierce difference. I mean, I feel when, you know, when someone told you like it was not your fault, I’m sorry that this happened to you, yeah, and they don’t, they don’t have to understand, you know that. But she used to hurt those boys as like, okay, it was not my fault. Everything is gonna be fine. And I think that hearing that for the first time, you know, with Steven, I feel such a big relief. I was like, Oh, my God, I don’t have, you know, that heavy pain in my shoulders and and she’s still having one, a trusted person, to tell what’s going on. I think that makes a huge issues different. And I can I keep telling my story, because we hold so much, and I wish everyone can have a safe place to to tell what’s going on, to be open, to seek for support, and we often don’t have that and and I will continue telling my story until we all feel comfortable about talking about uncomfortable things. You know, such sexual abuse was big part of you know me, and I remember, you know young teenagers when I was speaking schools coming to me, and there was heavy thank you, and they would look at my eyes, and I would be like, I know I see you and and that’s, that’s what makes me continue doing this. Because not all we have, we don’t have. I take advantage of this platform because we don’t have, not all of us have access to these so I feel that I’m speaking for all of those little girls and teenagers who are going to draft time.

 

Maya Rupert  27:35

Yeah, I feel like so much of your story is you. You know, you needed a social worker who was going to see you and see your family. And you didn’t have it. And you became that you needed to hear a story to help you be comfortable telling yours. And now you’re becoming that so much of what you’re doing is becoming what you needed. And you’re you’re describing this as you know that the lightness in your shoulders that that has started to be healing for you. Is that healing an ongoing process?

 

Luz Hernandez  28:06

It is an ongoing process, that trauma is always going to be there, but you learn how to move on. You have to decide like, which road Do you want to be in? I always tell myself, do you want to feel sorry about yourself or everything that happened to you or you want to, like, move on, you know, and fight for a better future. Fight for a better life. And I decided, you know, to fight for for a better life.

 

Maya Rupert  28:31

I want to play another excerpt from Solito, Solita:.

 

Solito, Solita:  28:37

Many Americans think that we come here to take their jobs, to do bad things, to take advantage of the country. I’m not a bad person. I came here to survive, to do better in this world, to help my family and other people. There was no way to survive in my homeland. I didn’t choose to come here. I didn’t have another option.

 

Maya Rupert  28:59

As someone who’s gone through the journey of leaving your home country in order to survive coming here. What do you think is the thing that is least understood when it comes to immigration?

 

Luz Hernandez  29:11

The why I feel that? Why we’re immigrating, right? People were just judging why there’s a lot of immigrants coming, crossing the borders, but they will not take the time to to go to know that, that the people, Oh, what is going on, or what is going on in their country, that they’re fleeing to another country, leaving your family behind is not, is not an easy decision. I don’t think everyone’s just want to, you know, flee a different country where you don’t speak the language, when you don’t have housing, when you don’t have family. You know, a lot of people do it in order to survive and poverty, there’s so much property and godly violence. And I’m talking about and do this right now, and I feel that immigration has become a political topic, and there’s so many like negative stereotypes about immigration and. Uh, not about like the experience of the people, the reasons why, why we’re doing it. We come here to to help our families, to fleeing for poverty from violence, to, you know, have a better future for ourselves, for our families. I, you know me as many other people come to this country, and they work hard and hard and hard, they contribute to the community, they pay taxes, they do so much for the community, and I don’t see the harm you know coming and trying to seek help, trying to seek for a better life. I will, I don’t know what would be of my family right now if I would not come here. I’ve been supporting my family since I came here, since I was 14 years old. I support my family, and because of that, they have a plate of food every day. They have a housing they have a place to leave to sleep. And I have worked so hard. I have worked since I came here, non stopping. And you know, the opportunity for me to be here, to get an education and to be able to not only support myself now, but also support my other sisters, my nephew, my niece, my mom, you know, my my family, that’s huge for me, and that’s what a lot of people are seeking for, you know, opportunities for themselves and opportunities to help their families.

 

Maya Rupert  31:30

Right, you’ve lived in the US now for almost 20 years, and you’ve been a citizen for some years as well. Do you feel at home here? Do you feel like you belong?

 

Luz Hernandez  31:44

Yeah, I I do and I do not. Sometimes, when I’m visit home, I stay there for a month and I feel that eager to come back, that I miss my home and the US is home. I have a strong support network here. I have mentors, I have friends, I have people that are really close to me. But at the same time, when it comes I feel that I’m still struggling every day. I struggle in a professional level about feeling like that I belong in this society. Sometimes I have experience in the workplace that people had told me to go back to my country or to go back to school because I have a thick accent. Oh, how do you got a Berkeley degree if you don’t know this and that? Wow. So I experienced a lot of those comments, and until now and and when I hear those comments sometimes made me think, like, did I, even, you know, belong here? Why? What is, was that is something that I have to do in order to to feel part of this society. And that’s a struggle, that’s an everyday struggle.

 

Maya Rupert  33:04

Right, well, I will just say I am unbelievably grateful that you are here and for the work that you’re doing, and I know for you to tell your story, you’ve had to unpack a lot of trauma, I want to close us you. You mentioned having people hear your story, and having young people come up to you look you in your eyes and say, Thank you, and you know, feeling like they may have similar stories to tell. If you can talk directly to some of those people who come up to you and feel seen and say thank you, and are contemplating telling their stories and unpacking some of their trauma, what would be the advice that you would give to them?

 

Luz Hernandez  33:43

To be kind to yourself. You know, when you’re ready, you’re gonna be ready. And when you’re ready, make sure to have a close person next to you, like someone that you feel, that you can trust, someone that you that you know they’re gonna be there for you. You know, as I mentioned, you know, when I told, I told my story, I feel such a relief, you know, but also a lot of pain, a lot of pain came, yeah, a lot of memories, a lot of whys why this happened to me. So just be kind to yourself after you, you know, impact something so happy. Make sure that you do something for yourself after go for a walk, go for a coffee, do something that you know it will be suiting to you. Telling your story is not easy. It’s not easy as it can be, you can take take time. That’s why I say when you know it’s ready and there’s time you will know it, and she’s lean into your support network, to your friends, family, anyone that is going to be is going to be there for you.

 

Maya Rupert  34:56

Be kind to yourself. That learning to be kind was one of. The first things you listed that you learned from your grandmother, I think she would be very proud of that advice and of everything that you’re doing.

 

Luz Hernandez  35:07

Thank you.

 

Maya Rupert  35:08

It has been so incredible talking to you truly. Thank you for sharing your time, for being this generous, for being brave and for telling your story.

 

Luz Hernandez  35:19

Thank you for having me here.

 

Maya Rupert  35:25

You can read Luz’s full story in the voice of witness book Solito, Solita, along with the powerful oral histories of 14 other youth refugees from Central America. For more info about the storytelling project and others, including education resources and ways to take action. Visit voiceofwitness.org and subscribe to the newsletter. This episode is created in partnership with Voice of Witness, an oral history nonprofit that advances human rights by amplifying the stories of people impacted by and fighting against injustice. To learn more, visit voiceofwitness.org, I’m your host, Maya Rupert, this series is produced by Hannah Boomershine And Lisa Phu. Our supervising producer is Muna Danish, mixing and Sound Design by Noah Smith. Steve Nelson is our SVP of weekly content. Executive Producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer. Help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. Thanks so much for listening. We’ll see you next week. Follow Good Things wherever you get your podcasts and listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership.