The US has never been a democracy. Perhaps, for some, the most recent indefinite imprisonment of undocumented immigrants in concentration camps finally shattered confidence in this US fantasy. And yet, for others, no amount of ...
Tag: Immigration
“The Word Illegal Didn’t Make Sense Anymore”
Ten years ago, when I would ask my students if they knew any modern Italian authors—not Dante—I would occasionally get the response of “Calvino” and, more ...
The Immigration Crisis Archive
Back in 1954, the Eisenhower administration shut down the US government’s last remaining long-term immigrant holding facility, an ...
Membership, Citizenship, and Democracy
President Trump’s pernicious attacks on nonwhite immigrants have thrust a particular theory of political membership—white nationalism—to the forefront ...
Borders, Guns, and Freedom
Like the pioneers two hundred years before him, Mark Romano recently decided to head West. Like those pioneers, Mark—a white, unemployed electrician ...
Marriage and Other Shams
In the early 1980s, an Indian guru homesteaded a tract of ranchland in rural Oregon, building a utopia equipped to withstand both HIV and American hypocrisy. Armed with free love and even freer ...
The Future of Migration
In 2008, in a town of about 2,000 people, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained 389 workers and charged them with civil immigration violations and identity theft. The Bush ...
India’s Youth: Small Chances, Big Dreams
The first time someone recommended Snigdha Poonam’s Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing the World to me, I rolled my eyes at the title. I wondered ...
The Great Global Grad School Novel
Was Sharmila Sen “happy” on the first morning she woke up in the United States to the strange smell of bacon frying? That’s what her young son wants to ...
The Great Global Grad School Novel
Was Sharmila Sen “happy” on the first morning she woke up in the United States to the strange smell of bacon frying? That’s what her young son wants to ...
Citizens to Come: Building Beyond the 14th Amendment
On the 150th anniversary of the 14th Amendment we are called upon ...
Adoption Anxieties
Given the overall paucity of novels about interracial adoption, it is striking that no fewer than three were published in 2017. In general, reviewers warmly received Shanthi Sekaran’s Lucky Boy, Lisa ...
Chaucer and Humanitarian Activism
Refugee Tales, a recent adaptation of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, is more than a retelling of one of our “great books” of English literature ...
“Rivers of Blood” @50
Imperial historians, and inhabitants of places colonized by Britain, know that much of England’s history happened beyond its borders. As decolonization whittled away imperial possessions ...
Down Under, Between Destinations
In 1966, Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey published The Tyranny of Distance, a work that described how Australia’s history had been shaped by ...
Sanctuary Syllabus
On January 27, 2017, Executive Order 13769 went into effect, banning foreign nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. Within hours, Customs and Border ...
The Big Picture: The Promise of Sanctuary
In June 2015, during the early days of his candidacy during the Republican primaries, Donald Trump declared: “I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for ...
The Big Picture: Criminalizing Immigrants
Peering out the windows of John F. Kennedy Airport in the early morning hours of January 29, 2017, I had hope for this country’s future on immigration policy. Hundreds of ordinary New Yorkers were ...
The Big Picture: Building the Wall
Since November 2016, I’ve unfriended one family member on Facebook, and have been tempted to unfriend others. I blocked a cousin who lives in Texas and posted about Mexicans taking American jobs. It ...
Zombie Guts and Border Walls
In Season 2 of the zombie apocalypse show Fear the Walking Dead, Nick, a gringo junkie from Los Angeles, survives separation from his family by slathering himself with zombie guts and walking ...
