After years of working at the intersection of immigration and education, journalist Lauren Markham offers a different approach to writing about immigration that may lead to greater understanding. In her book A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging, Markham talks about challenging narratives and stories, looking at our own history, and asking what it means to belong to a place.
“There’s a bit of a Disneyland-ification around the Ellis Island era,” says Markham. “They got in line, and they got checked for lice, and they got their exams, and then they were set forth on the world. And thanks to them, we get to be who we are.”
Alejandra Oliva, essayist, immigrant rights advocate, and the author of River Mouth: A Chronicle Of Language, Faith And Migration, shares her experience volunteering as a translator and interpreter on the Southern border and how the sheer scale of the problem took an emotional toll on her. Oliva had thought she would be able to do more. She questioned her own ethics along with the moral and emotional impact of getting involved in an issue as big and complicated as immigration. “It very often feels like you're just fishing people out of the river, one by one without trying to figure out why they're in the river. And it feels exhausting and thankless and there's always another person coming in.”
In her book A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging, author Lauren Markham, challenges the notions of borders.” What we're seeing today is partially a continuum of what's always been true, which is that a nation-state creates these borders that then require outsiders to define the insiders.”
Lauren Markham, pictured here, says “thinking about the border as one monolithic problem is part of the problem…so many possibilities of worker visas and temporary visas that could allow people to come into this country for shorter periods of time, to make money, fulfill critical industries that we have here, and have humane living and life experiences when they're here.” Photo courtesy of Andria Lo
In her book River Mouth: A Chronicle Of Language, Faith And Migration, author Alejandra Oliva says “ everyone who sets out idealistically to quote, unquote, help other people runs into- you think that you're gonna be a hero and you're gonna be able to fix everything, make a big difference,”..” the reality is that movements don't work that way. Sitting across from someone never works that way. There's never just one thing you can do that will fix someone's life magically.”
Alejandra Oliva pictured here says “ you make somebody's life materially a little bit better by fishing them out of the river. But very often, you're not even actually fishing people out of the river, you're just sort of giving them a firm handshake on their way down and say ‘good luck’”. Photo by Anna Longworth.
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