Authors Speak Out on Immigration

I thought I'd share this clip from Junot Diaz, (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) currently on a book tour for his latest novel, This Is How You Lose Her. He was asked about the politics of immigration and the DREAM Act, which provides an opportunity to gain legal status for undocumented students who entered the country before the age of 15, have been physically present in the United States for at least five years, graduate from high school, and/or complete at least two years of college or military service. Take action for the DREAM Act here.


As I am sure many of my Loyal Readers know, President Obama implemented the so-called mini-DREAM Act, allowing temporary relief to undocumented young people.  Edwidge Danticat writes,

There is a powerful photograph of a group of undocumented young people—DREAMers—lying in the sand in Miami, their joined bodies spelling out the words “DREAM ACT NOW”, as if hoping to be seen from the heavens.

“DREAMers” are just what they sound like: bright, hopeful, and optimistic young people. They came here as children and have spent most of their lives in the United States. Yet they have remained in legal limbo, with the specter of deportation hanging over their heads. ...

Earlier this year, the Obama Administration granted relief from deportation to between 800,000 and 1.7 million DREAMers and made it possible for them to try to find work and/or get an education. This new policy can be reversed at any time—especially by an administration that is hostile to immigration—and can leave DREAMers back in limbo, back in the sand.

Danticat wrote powerfully about the failures of our migrant and refugee policy in Brother, I'm Dying. Still on the case, check out her more recent New York Times editorial on immigrant detention here.

Finally, this month we are reading Hector Tobar's The Barbarian Nurseries, a novel layered with rich portraits of the immigrant experience in America. Tobar has also written a nonfiction book, Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-Speaking United States, so it's not surprising that he has insight to offer on the plight of young immigrants in the video below.

To learn more about how immigrants' rights are human rights and how you can get involved in supporting the DREAM Act and opposing abuses of immigrants in detention visit Amnesty International's campaign page.

Fukushima to Haiti: What Disasters Reveal

This month we have been discussing Haruki Murakami's short story collection, After the Quake and as an adjunct to that I wanted to bring attention to novelist Junot Diaz' essay, Apocalypse: What Disasters Reveal, from the Boston Review last May. (He also discusses the essay on NPR's On Point.) Diaz looks at the potential of apocalyptic events such as natural disasters to reveal and clarify our world,

After all, if these types of apocalyptic catastrophes have any value it is that in the process of causing things to fall apart they also give us a chance to see the aspects of our world that we as a society seek to run from, that we hide behind veils of denials.

Apocalyptic catastrophes don’t just raze cities and drown coastlines; these events, in David Brooks’s words, “wash away the surface of society, the settled way things have been done. They expose the underlying power structures, the injustices, the patterns of corruption and the unacknowledged inequalities.” And, equally important, they allow us insight into the conditions that led to the catastrophe, whether we are talking about Haiti or Japan. (I do believe the tsunami-earthquake that ravaged Sendai this past March will eventually reveal much about our irresponsible reliance on nuclear power and the sinister collusion between local and international actors that led to the Fukushima Daiichi catastrophe.) If, as Roethke writes, “in a dark time, the eye begins to see,” apocalypse is a darkness that gives us light.

Diaz goes on to discuss how natural disasters expose the kinds of societal choices (eg. the neglect of the levee system that protects New Orleans) that create social disasters, and to explore the way in which the communities most vulnerable in a disaster, such as Haiti, are those least likely to benefit from the trend towards greater global inequality. I urge you to read the entire essay.

Having previously blogged about a documentary narrated by another of our authors which won a regional Emmy, I wanted to note that the Miami Herald recently won an Emmy for it's documentary, Nou Bouke,  narrated by Edwidge Danticat (Brother I'm Dying), a good visual complement to Diaz' piece,

Nou Bouke, a Creole term for "We're Tired," focuses on Haiti's past, present and future in light of the apocalyptic January 12, 2010 earthquake that now marks a new chapter in the nation's history. The documentary presents a comprehensive look at the Haitian polemic as the Caribbean nation faces its most challenging crossroads due to the immense loss of life and destruction. 

Haiti and Healing

I know it's hard to take time away from what's happening in the Middle East, but if you can, spare a little time to come and take a look at what's happening in Haiti. Maybe there's something to be learned there about not letting ex-dictators retire with impunity, no? Just before protests started to unfold in Tunisia and Egypt, Baby Doc Duvalier had returned to Haiti. Amnesty International released this video as a reminder of the legacy of human rights violations from the Duvalier era and has called for investigations into those abuses:



Amy Wilentz (Rainy Season: Haiti-Then and Now) was interviewed by NPR regarding his return and offered up some insight in the Nation Haiti: Not for Amateurs,

Lost in the uproar over the return of Jean-Claude Duvalier to Haiti and his to-ing and fro-ing from hotel to courthouse to hotel to mountain home, is the much more important political crisis. On election day in November, only 22.3 percent of Haiti’s eligible voters cast their ballots in what turned out to be an election plagued with fraud. The reason for the low turnout was apathy, coupled with the catastrophic loss of identity papers in the earthquake of January 2010. Given the miserable conditions of so many Haitians since the earthquake, the anemic turnout provided resounding evidence that Haitians don’t believe their vote matters.

And they are right...

More Haiti commentary from Amy Wilentz at the Los Angeles Times and CNN.

Edwidge Danticat, as always, has been putting out more books and commentary about Haiti.  See the story collection she has edited, Haiti Noir and her book of essays, Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work, which you can also listen to as part of Princeton's Toni Morrison Lecture Series.  And if that's not enough there is a childrens book about the earthquake: Eight Days (more on that from NPR).  In the New Yorker, she reflects on the anniversary of the quake, see also the Miami Herald (recovery is a Sisyphean task). And for more of her insights on how art and literature contribute to the healing of a nation see this wide-ranging interview at Guernica,

Guernica: I remember being fascinated as a young girl in Port-au-Prince by what people in the streets would turn into art pieces—using a small stone, a chacha branch, whatever was available to them as canvas. Haitians truly have art in their soul.

Edwidge Danticat: Yes, it shows you that art will not be denied. Think of the daily functions of art in Haiti. The lottery stands. The tap tap camions. It’s all covered with beautiful art. My friend, the painter Ronald Mevs, used to say that Haitians are born surrealists. We are doing collage all the time, in daily life as well as in our art. So old oil drums become metal sculpture and old carnation milk cans become lamps, called tèt gripads, like bald-headed girls. Art is our communal dream.

Guernica: How has Haitian art changed peoples’ perception of Haiti?

Edwidge Danticat: People sometimes think they know Haiti through what they have seen in the news. When they see a piece of art that we’ve produced, listen to a song, or read a piece of literature that we’ve written, we become closer to them. We are now part of them when the art stays with them. They then come closer to meeting us, and closer to the different layers of who and what we are.

And finally see this LAT interview with Paul Farmer, who we read about in Tracy Kidder's Mountains beyond Mountains for more on the health of Haiti,

Q: Was all the money donated after the earthquake put to good use?

Farmer: The $2 billion that came in after the earthquake, almost none of it went to the public sector. That was earthquake relief, not reconstruction. The relief monies were used in a pretty good manner. I don’t think people need to feel bad about the relief -- a lot of medical care, a lot of people who lost homes. It’s the reconstruction that’s the problem. It’s rebuilding. That money, a lot of it is tied up, it’s quite literally tied to aid or tied to some conditionality and hasn’t arrived yet. Schools, roads, water, hospital systems. We regard the Mirebalais hospital as reconstruction, not relief.

Dahl: That’s where more of the focus has to go. But I do think people get stuck, almost creating a rut in the ground saying the money hasn’t been well spent so we shouldn’t release any more money. We don’t think the Haitian people deserve this at all. It takes a while to rebuild. If you want to, there are all sorts of ways to do things like monitor how money’s being spent.

Q: Will the return of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier have any impact on the work you do and the reconstruction?

Farmer: I have no idea. It just seems to add more turmoil. I can’t see anything good that would come out of it unless there’s accounting for crimes.

More from our authors on Haiti

Now that our Haitian expert authors have had some time to breathe, they're collecting their thoughts and sharing:

Edwidge Danticat lost her cousin Maxo, son of her uncle Joseph, in the earthquake. Joseph was the central character in her memoir, Brother, I'm Dying, and Maxo accompanied his father on that fateful trip to the US. Danticat shares her memories of Maxo in the New Yorker.

Paul Farmer and colleagues have penned an op-ed for the Miami Herald and Farmer is interviewed on WNYC,



Amy Wilentz takes on the pundits (The Haiti Haters) in The Nation and is also now in Port-au-Prince filing dispatches for TIME,

There are so many dead — and yet, so many living. And the living, too afraid — rightly — to go back inside, are all staying out on the street. As a friend of mine wrote recently on Twitter, "The street has become the living room of the people." But I'm not just talking about the new tent cities, interior refugee camps that have sprung up in so many of the capital's available empty lots and public spaces. I'm also talking about plain old life on the streets. The cards players, the clothes washers, the charcoal sellers, the water men, and the thousands of quotidian passersby. With so many dead, Port-au-Prince seems, if anything, more crowded than ever.

Rights Readers Authors on Haiti

As is often the case, Rights Readers authors have special insights into events that concern us most and the Haitian earthquake is no exception. (Amnesty International's concerns for Haiti going forward are outlined here.)

Tracy Kidder comes forward in the New York Times (Country Without a Net) with an analysis of Haiti's development problems and a plug for the subject of his book Mountains Beyond Mountains,

But there are effective aid organizations working in Haiti. At least one has not been crippled by the earthquake. Partners in Health, or in Haitian Creole Zanmi Lasante, has been the largest health care provider in rural Haiti. (I serve on this organization’s development committee.) It operates, in partnership with the Haitian Ministry of Health, some 10 hospitals and clinics, all far from the capital and all still intact. As a result of this calamity, Partners in Health probably just became the largest health care provider still standing in all Haiti.

Certainly, Partners in Health would be a very worthy place for your charity dollar.



Amy Wilentz (The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier) is a local favorite with appearances on an informative KCRW program, and in op-eds for HuffPo, and the LATimes, where she tries to stay optimistic about Haitian resilience,

The tragedy is tremendous and the threats to life ongoing in a situation in which the ground is still trembling and disease likely. But the capacity of this people for survival and, indeed, for greatness in the worst of conditions has been demonstrated for more than two centuries. These are the descendants of people who overthrew an indecent, inhuman, overpowering slave system. Many of those still alive grew up under a vicious dynasty and rose up to oust it.

And finally, of course, Edwidge Danticat (Brother, I'm Dying) has been sharing her concerns for family and the country of her birth at Democracy Now, NPR, CNN and no doubt other outlets. More moving though, may be this video recitation (starting at about the 11 minute mark), made after a different disaster, of the high points of the intertwined history of Haiti and the United States. May we draw on and strengthen those bonds now.

Rights Readers Round-up

Prize winners corner:

• Edwidge Danticat (Brother, I'm Dying) won a MacArthur "genius" grant. Her reaction and plans here.

• Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran) writes about the connections between the Iranian recipients of this years Anna Politkovskaya Award and the award's namesake and previous winner Natalya Estemirova.

• Memorial wins the Sakharov prize.

• Muhammad Yunus (Banker To The Poor) and Wangari Maathai (Unbowed) defend President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. Nick Kristof suggests Greg Mortenson and Paul Farmer as alternative winners. Foreign Policy runs down a list of Nobel losers including Rights Readers faves Eleanor Roosevelt and Ken Saro-Wiwa.

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is the most read book on the New York City subway.

Forthcoming:

• Greg Mortenson has a new book coming out for your holiday gift list.

• Ha Jin's novel Waiting is to be made into a movie and Mira Nair's next project is the film version of Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

• Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International (and Nicolas Kristof) talk about the current state of the human rights movement at NPR's On Point. A very interesting discussion, though we don't learn much about Khan's new book, (The Unheard Truth: Poverty and Human Rights).

• John Conroy (Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture) has written a play about the Chicago police torture scandal. Also, check out this provocative article about his personal experience as a crime victim.

• Dinaw Mengestu (The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears) chats about the cities he's lived in and his next book:
  
  Interview with Dinaw Mengestu from Granta magazine on Vimeo.
  
  

On the issues:

• Bill Moyers interviews Dr. Jim Yong Kim (see Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains) about the connections between our current national healthcare debate and global health issues.

• Ted Conover (Newjack)is interviewed by On the Media about the ethics of his undercover reporting at Sing Sing prison.

• Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) discusses poverty and the recession on NPR's On Point and then stands up for the grumpy among us on the The Daily Show.

• Meanwhile looking ahead to Copenhagen and the climate change talks, Orville Schell (Mandate Of Heaven) writes for the NYT- The Thaw at the Roof of the World- and Mark Hertsgaard (Earth Odyssey) in the Nation- Climate Roulette. Wangari Maathai leaves us with this PSA:

Rights Readers Round-up

Rights Readers authors have been busy this summer:

Iran continues to be a major topic of commentary: check out Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis) in the NYT: I Must Go Home to Iran Again. Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran) calls for freeing filmmaker Maziar Bahari (more from AIUSA and action) Message to Tehran: Let our truth-teller go. Stephen Kinzer (Crescent and Star) is optimistic Iran and U.S. 'not fated to be enemies forever' and offers some advice to Obama on a shared birthday.

On the home front, Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) has three NYT editorials with audio supplement on the how the recession has hit the "already poor," here, here and here, while Hector Tobar (The Tattooed Soldier) has another insightful column on immigration. Walter Mosley (Little Scarlet) offers 10 Things You Need to Know to Live on the Streets, and has an opinion piece in Newseek: America's Obsession with Crime which he also discusses on NPR.

Tracy Kidder (Mountains Beyond Mountains) pays tribute to a local hero he met while writing his latest book (Strength in What Remains) in the NYT: A Death in Burundi. Edwidge Danticat (Brother, I'm Dying) writes an appreciation of Nobelist Wole Soyinka for the Progressive.

Mark Hertsgaard (Earth Odyssey) reports from Burkina Faso on climate change and appears on a FORA.tv panel on food security and climate change. Hertsgaard is preparing a book on the subject, certainly a good candidate for a Rights Read. Kevin Bales (Disposable People) is interviewed about his latest book, The Slave Next Door.

As follow up to our discussion of Caroline Elkins, (Imperial Reckoning), check out the Times (London) coverage of efforts by Mau Mau veterans to investigate torture claims, here and here with analysis here and here. Speaking of Kenya, Michela Wrong (I Didn't Do It for You) can be found promoting her new book, It's Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower at openDemocracy (see also interviews with NPR and NYT.) Her pr strategy has some interesting twists.

Muhammad Yunus (Banker To The Poor) was one of the luminaries who received a presidential medal of freedom. Paul Farmer (Mountains Beyond Mountains) will not be heading USAID, but Samantha Power (A Problem from Hell) has been appointed by President Obama to assist refugees of Iraq war. And did you know that in a nod to the late Russian journalists Anna Politkovskaya (Putin's Russia) and her brave colleagues, President Obama gave an interview in Novaya Gazeta on his recent Moscow visit? More from CPJ. Sister Helen Prejean (Dead Man Walking) has some post-papal audience questions for Obama (and the activist community). Meanwhile Jarvis Jay Masters' (Finding Freedom) latest, That Bird Has My Wings is available for amazon pre-order.

Okay, so I should probably post a little more often so as not to make this such a huge link dump... but at least I'm caught up!

Jailed without Justice

Revisiting the subject of our March discussion (Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat) of deaths in immigrant detention, Amnesty International released a compelling report on the subject in March (yeah, I'm a little late on this one), Jailed without Justice. You can download the report and take action here.

Hear AIUSA Executive Director discuss the report on WNYC:



The NYT reports on another death in immigrant detention here.

Bonus: Edwidge Danticat reads poetry in Haitian creole for PEN.

Our March Author: Edwidge Danticat

Let's start with a little excerpt from a 60 Minutes interview with Edwidge Danticat about her uncle's asylum case, detailed in our March book, Brother, I'm Dying.


Watch CBS Videos Online

Once you get past the obnoxious audio ad, this Washington Post slideshow, 'Faking Symptoms' -- An Asylum Seeker's Ordeal, is also a worthy visual companion to the book.

There is no shortage of interviews and one can never go wrong with NPR's Terry Gross. Even better there is this exposé of detainee medical abuse The Death of Richard Rust which also explores the Dantica case and the report Homeland Security made as followup- "a whitewash."

National Book Foundation interview,

JG: What was the hardest part of your book to write - and why was it so challenging?

ED: The hardest part was reading the government documents involved in my uncle's death.

Every encounter he had with a government official seemed so unfriendly, so distant, so cold. You have a feeling that no one was responding to him as a person, as a human being.

Democracy Now! in the wake of Danticat's testimony before a congressional committee explores the book but also draws the author out on other human rights concerns,

ED: Amy, there are actually two films now that are out on this subject that are extraordinary. One is The Price of Sugar, and one is a film called Sugar Babies that I narrate that deals with these issues. I think it’s powerful what these protesters were saying, the focus that—to focus some of the heat also on the sugar industry and the United States and the fact that actually in one of the documentaries, one of the sugar barons who actually functions here in Florida and has had a conflict with migrant labor in Florida and that are still unresolved, you know, with lack of pay—the same issues that you have with some of these bateys in the Dominican Republic. And he says something like, you know, one out of—you know, half of the sugar—he’s in every cereal box, or something to that effect, that we consume his sugar in the United States, and people may not realize that there are some subsidies that are provided to these sugar-producing families in the Dominican Republic to produce the sugar that we use here in the United States. So these issues, certainly they’re connected, the issues of migration and the fact that these children are “in transit” for their entire lives. People who have been in the Dominican Republic for fifty, sixty years are considered “in transit.” These issues and the conditions in the bateys are very important. But also it’s important for people who live here to realize, you know, it’s not disconnected from you, because this is supported by the sugar we consume here in the United States.

Foreign Policy In Focus asks Danticat what she would like to see from Obama,

Miller: What should the next president of the United States do to improve conditions with (and within) Haiti?
Danticat: I think he or she should support the leader the Haitian people have chosen for themselves and not impose U.S. choices on the people. Haiti is a very close neighbor and should not be neglected.. Aid should be given toward building infrastructure and long-term institutions so that every couple of years there is not a forced regime change that requires putting out more fires.

In lieu of an author's website, good places to explore are this compilation of NYT articles and reviews and The New Yorker has more memoir and fiction by the author online. UCSB has a wide-ranging interview and lecture here available on YouTube, probably of more interest to those who have read her fiction in addition to Brother. Danticat weighs in on the efficacy of torture, "Does It Work?" in the Washington Post.

Amnesty International details current concerns for refugees and asylum seekers here. The Dantica case has mostly disappeared from the website but here is an AIUSA statement submitted to a U.S. Senate investigating committee.

Finally, UNICEF brings a happier story out of Bel Air.

For March: Brother, I'm Dying

For March we have chosen Brother, I'm Dying
by Edwidge Danticat,

From the age of four, award-winning writer Edwidge Danticat came to think of her uncle Joseph as her “second father,” when she was placed in his care after her parents left Haiti for America. And so she was both elated and saddened when, at twelve, she joined her parents and youngest brothers in New York City. As Edwidge made a life in a new country, adjusting to being far away from so many who she loved, she and her family continued to fear for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation deteriorated.

In 2004, they entered into a terrifying tale of good people caught up in events beyond their control. Brother I'm Dying is an astonishing true-life epic, told on an intimate scale by one of our finest writers.