I thought my father was sending me off to the city with my uncle to study. I didn’t fully grasp that I was sold until I was about 15 years..

With a straight face my mother replied, “It would have been better if you had let me die.”

I’m an athlete through and through, model year 1983...I was someone always in motion... But what happens when that motion is tested...

When looking back at those days, I marvel at how far I have come. Maybe it was luck. Maybe it was desperation. Maybe I will never find out..

Our village was surrounded by the forest on all sides, but those were not forests children could play in, because there were tigers...

I was born into what became a large family of eleven children. As I was one of the oldest, I had new siblings on an almost yearly basis...

Maybe it would have been a lot different if life had stayed peaceful and carefree like when I first came into this world...

I can still remember the smell of the city streets before there were cars. Trams and horse-drawn carts trundled past...

That’s when she married my stepfather who served in the US Military. Because of his job, we moved to the US...

Unfortunately, the north also houses some of the poorest and least privileged of the country. Labor can be as easily bought and sold...

They say that daughters are a blessing, but that was not my reality. You see...for years, I blamed myself for my mother’s death...

In fact, I was 16th in the rankings, including my father’s children from his two older wives, who each had six children before...

That year, there was a massacre in an eastern village. Nearly 600 were killed with sprays of bullets and machetes...

I was the son of a working mom from the Midwest and a devoted dad that had immigrated to the US from Mexico at an early age...

We were not rich, but we lived a happy and comfortable life. I saw the world through their eyes and everything seemed wonderfully...

I once met a woman named Mary, and Mary was quite contrary. She loved planting and making things grow. We met in LA, and ever since...

I do not want to drag you into historical facts. I want to tell you about the adventures of a boy who cheated death. So, let me take you...

I did not come into a perfectly happy world upon my birth in 1883. My mother had always blamed my father for disappearing into his dirty...

The sun flowing through the crack of the window was not able to warm up the icy cold that was invading me at every thought of my future...

My mother took the highway and never looked back, not even at me! My father was left to care for me alone and since he lacked childcare...