Challenging the stereotype

Just when you think that there is absolutely no one on Earth who can understand what you are going through, the universe sends the unexpected your way. Khalid came to me in this fashion--but that is a story for a subsequent post. I am speaking now of a friend of mine. We have only met face to face once at an immigration conference in Chicago last April. My newly found friend was the bright spot in an atmosphere of chaos and confusion.

After the conference, we all went out to lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon talking. She is one of the rare individuals who can actually empathize with the predicament we are in because she has gone through the worst case scenario. Her husband was deported to Mexico many years ago, and after a few months of separation and anguish she followed: out of love, devotion and necessity--even though she is a bona fide, born and bred American citizen.

To get back to the main point, I was talking to this friend on the phone the other day and she was relating the comments of some of the people who attend her monologue: a performance piece that she presents across the States about the experiences of being a wife of a deportee. In well-meaning innocence some people express surprise that such an articulate, educated and talented young woman would find herself in such a dire predicament.

In translation, the speaker is actually asking "How could you have married a man who got himself deported?" This question simultaneously expresses a multitude of culturally entrenched stereotypes about both the presumed nature of the deportee and his wife. Fundamentally, people are not so much surprised that we are educated, thoughtful and creative but that we are seemingly normal and mundane. This is uncomfortable because this suggests that tragedy can happen to anyone, anywhere and at anytime. This was not the result of a character defect, bad karma or questionable judgement but the result of the intersection of racial and cultural stereotypes, political events and the unfortunate criminalization of immigrants in American society.

My friend and I-- and our husbands-- are not extraordinary. We do not stand out in society as unusual, wretched or scurrilous. We are just regular people just trying to survive in an ever-complicated world. Love called to us and we followed, aware that pitfalls, hardships and strife challenge even the strongest of relationships. Perhaps we were blind to the particular arduous path we choose but that does not deter us from forging ahead in love, in determination and in faith that somehow this will work out for the best. After all--that is really the only thing that any of us can ever do.