EP7: Writing on the Border

In this episode, we talk to activists and scholars from the US-Mexico borderlands and occupied Palestine to learn about the walls that divide indigenous people in each region. We look at how militarization of imposed lines impacts Tohono O’Odham and Palestinian communities, as well as the shared narratives of oppression and resistance. Reporting by Shraddha Joshi. A non-exhaustive list of additional resources on militarization, settler colonialism, and occupation in the US-Mexico borderlands and Palestine can be found at https://tinyurl.com/borderwalls.

This week, Meena interviews Valeria Luiselli, an author and essayist who has chronicled the journeys of unaccompanied children from Central America to the United States in her 2017 essay, “Tell Me How It Ends” and her 2019 novel, “Lost Children Archive.” We talk about finding inspiration for her writing, how translation plays a role in her books, and what she imagines her future writing will look like.

In this episode, former U.S. Border Patrol agent and author Francisco Cantú discusses his 2018 memoir, The Line Becomes A River: Dispatches from the Border. He grapples with his experiences in the force — including the harrowing and the heartbreaking — and, in turn, the important lessons he learned about the U.S.-Mexico border and systemic reform of the immigration system.

State law prohibits Arizona’s undocumented high school graduates from attending college as in-state students, making higher education unaffordable. We sat down with Angel Palazuelos, Reyna Montoya, and Dr. Tom Nerini to discuss in-state tuition access in Arizona. Reporting by Nik Kirk.

This week, Stories from the Border Summer Fellow, Julia Huesa, interviews Phil Torrey. Phil is the Managing Attorney of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program. The two talk about the historical context for crimmigration, his work with clients, and the impact of crimmigration during the COVID pandemic.

This week, our producer Jess Eng interviews Professor John Morán González, who is an English professor at The University of Texas at Austin and the Director for the Center for Mexican American Studies. Professor González is well known for his work on early 20th century history at the US - Mexico border, and specifically, the 1915-1920 Borderlands War, an undeclared war resulting in some of the worst state-sanctioned racial violence in American history. Growing up in the border town of Brownsville, Texas, Professor González always wondered why stories like these were being left out of the textbooks. In 2013, Professor González helped launch the educational non-profit Refusing to Forget along with four historians. Their goal is simple: retell the story of the borderlands and reclaim it as a part of Texas history.

This week, we’re joined by Ana Puente Flores, an immigration writer and scholar-activist from Mexico City who is currently based in New York, for a conversation on immigration detention, art, and empowerment. We talk about some misconceptions surrounding gender and immigration law in the United States, the risks detained immigrant women in particular face in detention, and why zines are an ideal platform for activism.

Immigrants – especially those who are undocumented – are being disproportionately affected by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Almost 280,000 undocumented immigrants work in the healthcare industry, serving on the front lines of combating the pandemic. However, their hard work in hospitals and clinics comes at a high risk of exposing themselves to the virus, and creates a paradox: they’re considered both undocumented and essential at the same time. Caitlin Dickerson, a national immigration reporter for the New York Times, joins us for a conversation on immigration during the novel coronavirus pandemic. Caitlin has been covering immigration since 2016 for the Times and, during the pandemic, has reported on changes to US immigration policy and the experiences of undocumented immigrants, international students and migrants at the US-Mexico border.

Host Meena Venkataramanan introduces Stories From the Border, a new podcast from the Stories from the Border publication.