Ana left her home town in El Salvador after several men in her family were killed in conflict between the government and opposing forces. She thought she might be safer in an urban environment but violence in the city, including car bombs, led her to decide to leave El Salvador. Ana finally came to the United States with her husband in 1990.

Since then Ana has been raising her children and supplementing her husband’s income through door-to-door sales of kitchenware in Spanish-speaking neighborhoods. Now that she is studying English in The Immigrant Learning Center Literacy Program, she would like to get a job where she can get more practice speaking English. She was a cosmetologist in El Salvador and dreams of going back to school one day to get her Massachusetts cosmetology license.