She said she spent the rest of the class wondering if she was even qualified for the job. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
De Leon released her latest book Borderless<\/em> in April and has made it her mission to showcase the multidimensional reality of Latin cultures and being a Latina in white spaces. She\u2019s written multiple books and essays that amplify complex Latino voices and is teaching a new generation of \u2018unknown storytellers\u2019 how to write their own stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI feel strongly about writing (and) bringing (people who) traditionally have been in the margins to the center,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n De Leon, the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants, had never read a book by a Latina author until she was 19 years old and in her freshman year of college. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s when she read The House on Mango Street by Mexican-American author, Sandra Cisneros. De Leon described the book as \u201ccrisp\u201d and \u201calive,\u201d with sprinkles of Spanish dialogue that echoed the voices of her family members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Until then, she did not know authors were \u201callowed\u201d to break the stylistic statute set by the white and male authors, like Ernest Hemingway or Raymond Carver, that she was typically assigned. De Leon said Cisneros\u2019 dialogue spoke to her on so many levels that, \u201cI honestly thought the professor made a mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n To relay an authentic story arc in her recently published book, De Leon traveled to the US-Mexico border at McAllen, Texas, to document first-hand accounts of people who risked their lives to come to the United States. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When De Leon was two years old, her parents moved 1,182 miles south of Boston to the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama, so she and her sister would have the \u201cbest education.\u201d But her life started to become divided.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n She said she felt stereotyped in high school and was forced to assimilate in her largely white school. In one troubling incident, De Leon recalled one of her teachers telling her to hurry up or she would miss the \u201cMetco bus.\u201d Metco is a desegregation program that transports students of color to schools in the suburbs. But the teacher had no idea that De Leon lived near the school and could walk home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n De Leon, the only person of color in her class, said she did not have the language to name what she was experiencing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But she said she felt like she did not belong there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, through her writing and other work, she\u2019s helping people in her community embrace their cultural differences and promote diversity, equity and inclusion through storytelling. Her organization, Story Bridge, also explores stories from participants\u2019 own lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n At a book reading in Porter Square this past February, De Leon and Patricia Park\u2014author of \u201cImposter Syndrome and Other Confessions of Alejandra Kim\u201d\u2014spoke candidly about how growing up in white spaces as children of immigrants is a dual battle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Park explained that beyond her own expertise as an Argentinian-Asian American, she\u2019s still learning about who confronts imposter syndrome and how it manifests itself in society. <\/p>\n\n\n\n De Leon said she will keep pressing her issues to students and others in her workshop. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In her classroom story about feeling like an imposter, De Leon said she spent the entirety of the creative writing class battling her inner voice that doubted if she was qualified for the job. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI am the professor,\u2019\u2019 De Leon said, “you shouldn’t doubt that.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n She recalled the words of her mother that gave her some peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do not be an imposter, her mother had told her, take up space. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This report was published in collaboration with the Boston University School of Communications School of Journalism. The journalism student is a member of a Reporting in Depth class taught by former Boston Globe reporter Meghan Irons.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jennifer De Leon was preparing for her creative writing class in 2010, rummaging through her bag, when a student approached 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