“Second Country” by Fred Arroyo

An essay by alumnus Fred Arroyo (fiction, ’97) appears at Origins:

In the fall of 1992 I began attending Purdue University as an English major. I was a first-generation college student, and I was trying to take an imaginative leap outside my family and class. Books held no value in my family, and though my mother attended night school to receive her GED, my father only had a third grade education. My parents never had any advice, wisdom, or financial means to help me. These are my origins and I felt at the time that I needed to escape them.

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