Through Alma’s Eyes
This is not how I hoped to celebrate the fifth anniversary of my precious novel, LUZ this week. As chaos and fear plague my country, my state, my neighborhood, while good, hardworking people are hunted and rounded up, torn from their families, their homes, and treated like criminals, I cannot celebrate.
They are not criminals. They are human beings forced to leave their home countries to escape danger, persecution, war, gangs, or dire poverty. They did what any of us might do in the same situation.
Hear their stories. Be moved by their plight. Don’t treat them like criminals.
I first began writing LUZ over twenty years ago as anti-immigrant sentiment was sweeping the country, when walls built along the border as a deterrent had pushed desperate, determined migrants further east through deserts, where many died of dehydration.
As an immigrant advocate, I listened to stories that opened my eyes and my heart. How farmworkers had easily crossed our border for decades and decades to work the fields. They were needed—welcomed—to do a job most Americans would not do. How sons and daughters crossed to find and be united with family members. How those who fled a civil war were unable to seek legal asylum because our country was complicit in supporting their repressive government. How gangs terrorized good families leaving them no choice but to flee to save their children. How many young men, with no prospects in their villages, felt a sense of duty to help support their mothers and siblings by finding work across the border.
As a writer I created characters who mirrored those stories. Alma, a daughter searching for her beloved missing father, Juan, a farm worker who had crossed the border countless times to support his family. Señora Lopez who fled the horrors of Guatemala’s civil war, leaving her a single mother struggling to support her daughter, Ana, in a foreign country. And sweet Manuel, pressured by his father to become a man by finding work across the border to help support his siblings.
Storytelling can be a catalyst for change, so I hoped to opened eyes and hearts with the story Alma might tell her daughter, Luz, one day—of her journey north in search of her father and the people she met along the way.
Writers don’t always know if they’ve reached their readers. I was fortunate to hear from many—some from rural areas and small towns—who said they weren’t familiar with these stories, the whys and hows of those desperate to come to our country. Through Alma’s eyes, they had gained a new perspective and understanding, felt compassion and, in some cases, empathy for those crossing our border. That I can celebrate.
I don’t know why our country has taken such a heart wrenching turn. There has to be a better way to implement humane immigration reform. Not this cruel, random, heartless mass deportation without due process.
I can only hope that together our voices of love and compassion will rise up and drown out the rumble of hate and fear that has been unleashed. I can only hope that together we will help get back our country’s heart and soul.
