YAKIMA, Wash. -- There was something sad in the women's gazes that stayed with Araceli Calderón González long after she left Yakima.

She had come in 2006 to collect stories from immigrant children for a book to be published in Mexico. But Calderón sensed a greater story in their mothers and in the other women she met here.

"It made me cry to wonder why these immigrants come to Yakima," said Calderón, a children's book author and literacy advocate. "Why do they leave home? Their communities may be poor, but they're so beautiful."

What Calderón discovered upon returning over the next two years was a narrative of domestic abuse that follows Mexican women into the United States, and the healing process they would begin inside a yellow house on South Sixth Street. It's an issue that receives little attention either here in the United States or in Mexico.

This afternoon, the stories and poems Calderón collected from 17 women at La Casa Hogar -- "Rights in a Foreign Land: Women, Domestic Violence, and Migration," a book published last year in Mexico -- will be presented to the public at the Yakima Valley Museum.

"These women chose to tell their stories so that other women in similar situations might learn that violence and migration aren't forces of destiny or God's will," said Calderón, who lives in Greeley, Colo., and will speak at today's event. "They simply don't want what happened to them to be repeated."

She collected the stories during a week at La Casa Hogar, where she gave poetry and literature workshops to women who take classes or work there. Later, she asked each woman to tell her how they came to the United States.

"One woman would only tell me her story with the lights off," Calderón said. "She cried so much and her story was so painful I wanted to run out of the room and stop listening. ...

"But then it was like a heavy weight had been lifted from her shoulders, and she left the room with such a relieved smile."

Many spoke or wrote about being physically, sexually or emotionally abused as young girls in impoverished Mexican communities. As studies in the United States and around the world have shown, poverty and few educational opportunities often contribute to higher incidences of domestic violence.

"My children and I trembled with fear every day when it was time for (my husband) to come home," wrote one woman, who identified herself as The Sad Narrator. "I wasn't free to do anything because he would explode and scream that I was unfaithful. After every beating, he would rape me."

The stories show how abuse that begins at a young age continues when women immigrate illegally to the United States, where they feel obliged to follow their husbands, fathers or other male relatives.

"It's a triple whammy," said Maria Cuevas, a sociology instructor at Yakima Community College, referring to the combination of being a poor woman in a male-dominated society and an illegal immigrant. "If you're here illegally, you're more vulnerable. You may be afraid to speak up."

Although the poems and stories deal in tragedy, they end on notes of hope -- a testament to the work done at La Casa Hogar, which has served roughly 4,500 immigrant women since it was started in 1995.

In the book's forward, one of Mexico's most prominent public intellectuals commended Carole Folsom-Hill, executive director of La Casa.

"Here and now, she tells them time and time again. She teaches them that life is worth living," wrote Elena Poniatowska, a revered writer and social critic. "She opens the way for them so that they may open the way for their children."

All the women in the book are in some way a part of the Casa Hogar community. They initially go there for the English classes, to learn how to drive or use a computer while their children play in an on-site day care. But something else happens while they're there, Folsom-Hill said.

"When we come with pain and brokenness in ourselves, even if others can't see it, just being a part of a supportive place allows us to be more confident and think, 'I have more in me than I thought I had,'" she said.

One woman wrote about finding work at La Casa after she left a man who beat her.

"Every day, many women with similar problems and fears come here," wrote the woman, who identified herself as Estrella Lara. "They find friends and a place they call home. They take English classes, computer classes, and courses on how to be better mothers. They know they are in a safe place and they will be okay."

The book was financed by various Mexican government agencies, including Michoacán state's secretaries of culture and immigration. Calderón said it has been well-received by audiences at international book fairs in Mexico.

For many in Mexico's educated upper class, what happens to poorer countrymen who leave for the United States isn't high on their radar.

"Mexicans in general kind of resent Chicanos," said Lauro Flores, who teaches Chicano and Latin American literature and chairs the American Ethnic Studies program at the University of Washington. "We are part of the empire -- the ones who betrayed Mexico" by leaving.

But attaching the name of Poniatowska -- who gained fame by documenting the student massacre during the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City -- to the book ensures it will be disseminated in Mexico, Flores added.

"We all know who Poniatowska is," he said. "Politically, she is a very important and well-known person. Her politics are very clear. She is always with the underdog."

In her forward, Poniatowska called the immigrant stories "monuments to a struggle."

She wrote that the book "is a register that should be kept, a scream from the other side of this country that abandons its people, a warning for thousands of migrants who every night, every month, throughout the year, cross the border."

If you go
WHAT: Book presentation honoring 17 stories told by women from La Casa Hogar.

WHO: Author Araceli Calderón González.

WHEN: 2-4 p.m. March 6.

WHERE: Yakima Valley Museum, 2105 Tieton Drive.

* Melissa Sánchez can be reached at 509-577-7675 or msanchez@yakimaherald.com.