Christina Jimenez believes that the answer to so many of life's challenges is found in building community.

That theory of the world is shaped by Christina's own experience as a young,

undocumented student organizer and co-founder of United We Dream, where she led the fight for the

Dream Act and for DACA. Christina is retracing her own coming of age story in her new book,

Dreaming of Home, how we turn fear into pride, power, and real change.

In it, she details her family's journey from Ecuador to Queens,

the complexity of falling in love while you are undocumented,

and the process of shedding her own shame and reclaiming her power. Hi, friend.

Hello, Alicia.

Congratulations.

Thank you so much, Amiga.

Thank you for all the support and all the love.

So I want to be really transparent

with our listeners, which is you and I tried to schedule this multiple times and multiple

times we got derailed either because of my schedule or because of yours. But that is in part

because of the moment you find yourself releasing this book into the world. I am sure this is not

how you envisioned things when you began writing this book. What does it feel like to release this book

that is looking back on your victories and your successes and your journey and realize that the moment it is arriving in

is Donald Trump's America. I remember very clearly how I felt the night of the 2016 election.

I remember being in a group of immigrant families mixed status, and people just started

crying and hugging each other. And my mom came up to me and she said, what are we going to do?

I felt I could not guarantee her. We could protect her and everyone in our community. But what I could

...