April 6th, 2021

My creative work recognizes the worth of dreams in America. With the most critical of love, I actively wonder what it entails to pursue a better life in our country. Yet, musing like this is difficult to do, since out here in the land of big Western skies, blue-sky writing rarely counts as an action. However, maybe like me, you too dream. What else are we to do but dream, if we are to value our work and celebrate its worth?
 
Living on the Southwest border, I watch the sun traipse across one sky, beginning in Mexico in the morning and setting in the horizon of its sister country in the evening. In the narrative of a day, I ruminate over lineages—literary, genealogical, historic. NAFTA El Paso’s former stature as the jean capital of the world leaves me with the dust. To recall the work of generations, I write books, produce jean heirlooms, and conceive scholarship that prioritizes the role of aspiration. Visually, I speak to the past and its labor. Moving beyond this past, my books prioritize language as an imperative attribute to imagining the future. My scholarship currently investigates the philosophical undergirding of the liberalism in America.

Through all forms, I consider myself a bridge-maker. When I look at my Grandfather’s green card, to dream of a better country remains an ageless paradigm. I Walk the Line like Cash and cross figurative borders like my Grandfather, a question emerges from these pursuits: what is the political utility of dreaming in America?

- Ali Dipp