:quality(85)//cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/infobae/NRSVDC3GOBDOBNXVQWQJILFEMU.jpg "“I am not broken”: the chiaroscuro of overcoming sexual abuse and discrimination in the United States 1")
between planes jesse leon I was not a writer, but I had the need to highlight the dark reality he suffered in UNITED STATES. This time of silence broke out and he decided to tell everything in “I’m not broken” (I’m Not Broken), a title in which he tells how he overcame years of sexual abuse, discrimination and even addiction.
In this revealing text, Jesse He goes through his memories, the moments that marked his existence, of his childhood, violently carried away. He was born in San Diego (California) in the 1970s. Son of Mexican immigrants and of working-class indigenous descent.
From the first pages “I’m not broke” It turns into a gripping story. Tell aloud to a Jesse Just eleven years old who has a dangerous and terrifying encounter in a gift shop that leaves a deadly secret in her hands. Event from which he was injured, fearing for his life and without support.
“I was the victim of a system. My child died for lack of help. So I wanted to do something to try to change that. I said, I’m going to write my story to show the world that even the most misguided, most lost young people have a future if they give us the chance,” Jesse León said in an interview with EFE.
In the book of about 400 pages, published by the label vintage spanish, Jesse opens and traces his passage through the hypermasculine world of the streets of San Diego, an underworld he arrived at through his own abuser and in which he learned to dodge the pain he kept, with the help of alcohol and drugs in the midst of prostitution.
In the interview he had with EFE, the author shared that between the ages of 12 and 14, he was forced to have sex with over 300 men. This cycle of abuse and fear caused him to feel alone, marginalized and have suicidal thoughts. Therefore, the book is also a denunciation and a call for otherness far from American whiteness.
The story brings to light the reality that has affected his life as a man belonging to an excluded and ignored group in a country where more and more attention is paid to victims of abuse, but not with regard to lower-class immigrant Latinos.
“I was a child who liked to help her mother. Preparing food, washing clothes. Having a clean bathroom filled me with pride because I felt useful. In the store, I blamed myself. I rejected that part of my life. To be eleven years old, to want, to kill myself, to no longer live,” said Jesse León in an interview with People.
Leon is responsible for creating an inspiring story of overcoming. If he presents his vicissitudes, he also recounts his exit from the hole by graduating from two of the most prestigious universities in the UNITED STATESfrom Berkeley and of Harvard; reflects in this book his own life journey, the one that began between the insults “wet back” (wet back), Bean and a sexual abuse that lasted for years between fear.
Currently, jesse leon he lives in San Diego with his mother. I oriented his life towards philanthropy and since his position he has dedicated himself to helping low-income families, as well as community members LGBT+ unprotected.
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