Before receiving the Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature, author Julissa Arce recalled the hardships of keeping her immigration status secret while trying to assimilate into a new country. However, she also vividly remembers the joys she experienced before obtaining citizenship.
The ceremony began at 4 p.m. in the McCune Conference Room of the Humanities and Social Sciences Building and was at capacity during the event. Shengyu Zhang / Daily Nexus
“I remember this picture of a wedding I went to in 2006 or something. I was still undocumented, and it’s a black and white picture, and I’m in this nice dress, twirling and smiling,” Arce said in an interview with the Nexus before receiving the Luis Leal Award. “I look at that picture, and I’m always just reminded [that] as many worries as I had, as much weight as I had to carry on my shoulders, there were still moments of joy that reminded me that at the end of the day, I am just a person like everybody else.”
Arce’s wide-ranging experiences as an undocumented student who became a Wall Street executive and later author are present throughout her literary works. On Feb. 4, Arce was presented with the 2026 Luis Leal Award for her contributions to Chicano/Latino Literature.
This year marks the 21st Luis Leal Award ceremony, which was established to commemorate UC Santa Barbara Professor Emeritus of Chicana/o studies Luis Leal, who passed away in 2010. Chicana/o studies Professor Emeritus Mario Garcia helped establish the award to preserve Leal’s legacy and honor the craft of Chicana/o literature.
“Luis Leal was a Chicano scholar who was one of the first people to say Chicano studies is a field of study at a time when people did not think that Chicano studies was a thing,” Arce said, reflecting on Leal’s legacy. “Professor Mario Garcia started this award in his honor and to say that all of us Chicano/Latino writers who have received this award are part of this tradition of putting our hands in the air and saying, ‘our literature deserves to be amongst all the literature.’”
Arce’s memoirs include “My (Underground) American Dream,” “Someone Like Me: How One Undocumented Girl Fought for Her American Dream” and “You Sound Like a White Girl.”
The ceremony began at 4 p.m. in the McCune Conference Room of the Humanities and Social Sciences Building and was at capacity during the event. Garcia began by introducing Arce before presenting the award.
The event transitioned into a Q and A portion where many of Garcia, his students and others in Chicana and Chicano Studies courses asked questions. Shengyu Zhang / Daily Nexus
“In her writings, [Arce] plants memoir, social critique and cultural analysis to reframe conversations around immigration, identity and what it means to truly belong,” Garcia said. “Her work is a leading voice in the national dialogue on race, belonging and the power of reclaiming one’s roots.”
Arce moved from her home in Guerrero, Mexico to Texas on a tourist visa when she was 11 years old. Once the visa expired, Arce became undocumented and held this legal status through high school and university. She graduated from University of Texas at Austin with a degree in finance and eventually became a vice president at Goldman Sachs by 27. Arce said she felt compelled to tell her story, which led to her career shift. Arce kept journals throughout her life, which have helped inform her memoirs.
“That is the work that I’ve tried to do now, is to really empower our community, empower us to know just how powerful we are, just how deep our roots in this country are and just how much history we have here,” Arce said, reflecting on what the award meant for her.
The event transitioned into a Q&A portion where attendees, including Chicana/o studies students, asked questions. When asked about the Trump administration’s immigration policy and whether United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement should be abolished, Arce said “absolutely.”
“We’re seeing people now who are sitting in detention center[s] who followed the process for the lucky ones that had a process to follow, and they’re still ending up in detention,” Arce said. “So it’s not about immigrants. It’s not about legality. It is a lot to do with skin color and immigration policy in this country, from the very beginning, has always been about race.”
Arce also described what it felt like to receive her green card.
“I remember opening this envelope and holding the green card, just thinking to myself, ‘Oh, my God,’ I went through so much for this plastic thing and yet, that plastic thing gave me so many freedoms,” Arce said “I could finally travel back to Mexico and go visit my dad’s grave and go visit my mom and go back to my grandma’s house.”
She continued by saying that when she began her writing career, she “wanted other people to see the humanity in immigrants,” but has more recently focused on “trying to give us language to name the thing that we’ve been feeling.”
“I still think to this day that the most important thing that we can do is to learn our history, because there’s a very important reason why people have tried so long to hide it from us and it’s because history empowers us,” Arce said.
When asked what advice she would give undocumented students navigating the system, she said that she would start by acknowledging their struggles.
“There needs to be a level of understanding that it really sucks to be an undocumented child, because you can have so many dreams and ambitions and aspirations, and left and right, people are telling you can’t do those things,” Arce said. “One thing about immigrants, we’re going to find a way, we’re going to figure it out. And so just reminding them that there are resources, that there are people who are rooting for them.”
After the Q&A, attendees were invited to meet Arce and sign their copies of her book.
A version of this article appeared on p. 6 of the Feb. 12 print edition of the Daily Nexus.
