* A quick word on terminology: the word “Hispanic” refers to any person who identifies with a Spanish-speaking culture, regardless of race, skin color, citizenship, nationality, or whether the person actually speaks Spanish. In Memphis, most Hispanics are Mexican immigrants or children of Mexican immigrants. Many other people might identify as Hispanic: a young man from Peru who just arrived in Alabama; an Afro-Caribbean woman from the Dominican Republic who’s lived 30 years in New York; a U.S. citizen child growing up in an old Mexican-American family in Texas where everyone only speaks English. And when I refer to “children of immigrants,” I mean children born in the United States as well as those like Isaias who were brought here when they were small.

* This is a work of nonfiction. I have used people’s real names, and at the rare times that wasn’t possible, I have simply left names out rather than inventing pseudonyms.