José Luis Montero’s project for the 2021 Jack Straw Writers Program is a series of short essays about his journey to the United States from Mexico. In his conversation with curator E.J. Koh, they discuss dispelling the myths of Mexican migration, how storytelling has always been integral to his life, and what it means to leave home. “The kind of story I want to talk about is not necessarily . . . all the forms that I have to fill to get my green card for my citizenship, but rather, what drove me to come here? And what I had to leave behind. And kind of like ask myself, in a very rhetorical way, is it worth it?”

Music by Andrew Weathers, produced in part through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.