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My name is Marisol Vega. I am Latina. Beautiful. Mesmerizing. A young mermaid filled with intrigue and power. A thinker of profound truths. A speaker of words like stone and fire.

Yet no one hears me. My brothers scoff at me. They put their hands over their ears when I open my mouth. They forsake my opinions. Dismiss my recommendations as `baby sister babbling.' My mother fi... More

My name is Marisol Vega. I am Latina. Beautiful. Mesmerizing. A young mermaid filled with intrigue and power. A thinker of profound truths. A speaker of words like stone and fire.

Yet no one hears me. My brothers scoff at me. They put their hands over their ears when I open my mouth. They forsake my opinions. Dismiss my recommendations as `baby sister babbling.' My mother filters my speech, threading out my passionate discourse by labeling it as nonsense that will never attract a good Latino one day.

My father cannot hear me. He is far away. Forever locked in the moist tropical earth of Colombia beneath an old Catholic church.

No one sees me either. My high school teacher failed to notice my absence one day. Then my absence the next day. Then the next. She did not see my empty school chair. She did not want to know where I was. That I was here, in the factory, next to mama and Juanita and Rosa and all the others, sweating through a ten-hour day to earn two dollars per hour pressing buttons on a big machine that swirl hot colorful liquids together that smell so syrupy sweet and then cool to make such a disgusting candy that no one but Americans can tolerate to eat.

...My words burn within me like boiling cauldrons. At night, when I rest on my small bed next to the window, I sleep without sleeping. I see words in my mind, dancing, flashing, twirling, dipping, and diving like sultry salsa dancers. I feverishly put them together to make wonderful stories that dazzle.

Sometimes, I write them down and give my scribblings to Se�or Pedro. The old shopkeeper is good to me. He tucks them away in his makeshift vault so as to save them for the day when fortune greets me and I am whisked me away to the university in Chile to gain culture and become famous and rich.

I laugh at Se�or Pedro's dreams for me. But inwardly, I relish the thought of using my prose to bravely reveal secrets. Dangerous secrets of the Colombian government, of fanatic warlords and of my father's untimely demise.

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