Using images from my personal life as well as images from places such as Iraq and Guatemala, along with symbols, and gestures that insinuate an American experience, I am able to express the perplexity that I feel as the first generation in my family to be born in the US. My desire to understand what makes me American to my family and what has made me so foreign to Americans is what drives me to take on both of these personas, drawing a parallel between the experience of the immigrant and the colonized. The drawing “He is us, It is them” depicts a delicately rendered child in their most vulnerable state of sleep as a predatory eagle dominates not only the child but also the entire space of the canvas. This work explores our lack of resistance towards a failed system, while questioning the myth of progress and power that has been associated with this country and ultimately is what has and continues draw so many here.