The Taxi Ride That Crossed Borders

So this past Friday, I got a taxi to the Pullman bus station. Casino de la Selva, to be exact.

I was on my way to Mexico City.

The driver and I were chit-chatting, nothing too heavy.

He asked me if I was from Spain. (The whole issue of my race/national identity/accent in Spanish and taxi drivers is for another post.)

I told him no, that I’m a  New Yorkina. And that my Mom and my husband are Mexican.

He was cool with that. Didn’t say anything rude or stupid, as is often the case when we start tap dancing on the race/nationality/accent in Spanish  floorboards.

He asked me, “By New Yorkina, do you mean that you’re from New York?”

I said yes.

He told me that he used to live in the US, but he was deported in 2007.

I said that  I used to live in the US, but that my husband was deported in 2001.

The taxi driver turned around to look at me for a second. He couldn’t really believe what I said.

We went back and forth about the details, R ordered out of the US for twenty years, the taxi driver ordered out for 10. The fact that R and I were legally married when his deportation happened.

The taxi driver told me that his sister had been trying to sponsor him, but time simply ran out.

He asked me a legal question that I didn’t know the answer to.

I realized right then how desperate he was.

He talked about how hard it was to be in jail in the US.

How tough it was when he first arrived back to Mexico. He’d been away for 14 years.

We pulled up in front of the bus station.

I paid, and wished him luck. And he wished both R and I luck as well.

I know that we changed the course of each other’s day by simply and directly speaking our truths.

Peeps, remind me of that taxi ride when I’m off my game, O.K.?

Friendship, Art, and Social Change

Hey Peeps.

So my good friend J is visiting from the States.

J was once a student in the study abroad program where I worked. I very rarely spoke to her the whole semester she studied here. I had quite the rep as the staff person who ignored/was NY direct towards students.

Ah, but that’s for another post!

Anyway, J returns to Mexico as an intern at the program. By that point, I’m no longer working there. We become friends.

J has deep theater roots.

In 2007, I start to perform a  a one-woman show called Unions of All Kinds. It was was the precursor to The Deportee’s Wife.

J, in her sweetly cheerful way, wants to help my show get better.

Along with another friend D, (also with fierce theater roots) they adopt me as their theater chrysalis.

They know that somewhere inside, the show’s a beautiful butterfly.

But at the beginning, I pretty much block their every attempt to make the show better and stronger.

However, they’re patient and relentless and don’t laugh in my face when I tell them that, “I don’t need a script, because I already know the story.”

Long story short, I now have a beautiful monarch butterfly of a show called The Deportee’s Wife.

J is sitting right in front of me as I write this.

Today I’m  grateful for our friendship. For her committment to me, my art, and social change.

Do you all know the TV program The Dog Whisperer?

Well, she was and continues to be The Show Whisperer.

And I’m one lucky cat:)

Ciudad Clusterfuck, aka Ciudad Juárez

Peeps, I’m furious and devastated at the same time.

Why?

So there was a huge number of killings this weekend in Mexico. The highest numbers were in Acapulco, in the states of Guerrero, and Ciudad Juárez, in the state of Chihuahua.

3 people were killed with US Consulate connections. One of them was an employee there. Don’t know about it? Read here

But I’d be very surprised if you didn’t know by now. It’s been splashed all over the media.

Listen, the fact that those people were killed is tragic. Their children were in the car. The kids lived, but two were hit with bullets.

The US consulate employee who died was pregnant.

But within my fright and my fear is my rage.

All the US media can talk about are the safety of the Spring Breakers in Mexico.

Here’s what it comes down to, kids:

The US Consulate in Ciudad Juárez is the only US Consulate in Mexico that issues immigrant visas.

President Barack Obama made a statement. Nothing about about the visa immigrant issue.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a statement. Same thing- zip about the visa immigrant issue.

And the whole connection of the narco wars to drug consumption in the US? Even less than nothing.

The fact is that there are US citizens who live in Ciudad Juárez and don’t work for the US Consulate.

The US Consulate was closed yesterday, due to a Mexican holiday.

They were apparently closed today, Tuesday, to mourn the killings.

People had US immigrant visa appointments today. They’ve been waiting a long time for them.

Are they going to be seen on Wednesday? Something tells me it won’t be that simple.

And I’m just going to say it: Do these 3 deaths count more?

Because I feel that the US media plays it out that way.

Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon is in Ciudad Juárez today.

Supposedly sending a message to the narcos, and to the world.

Whatever.

Ciudad Clusterfuck indeed.

Today I Love Chicago the Way I Love New York

Hey Peeps.

I’d pay good money to be in Chicago today.

When do you ever hear a New Yorker saying that? lol

Union Park, to be exact.

Do you know the Immigrant Youth Justice League?

Here’s what they say about themselves:

The Immigrant Youth Justice League (IYJL) is a Chicago-based network  that represents undocumented youth and allies in the demand for immigrant rights through education, resource-gathering, and youth mobilization.

And today, some of those undocumented youth are speaking out. The DREAMers, the students who’d benefit from the passing of the DREAM Act.

Some of them are identifying themselves. Read about it here. They’re kicking off a national “coming out of the shadows” campaign.

Now, not every DREAMer is coming out of the shadows. I completely respect their reasons why.

Right now, I’m thinking about when R and I were living in the States.

And what it would look like if R came out publicly about his undocumented status.

Jesus.

R and I walked into what was then the Chicago INS on April 26, 2001. Half an hour after sitting down with a deportation officer, R was in a prison uniform, handcuffed, in a jail in the basement of the Chicago INS.

I walked out of the Chicago INS building that day. R did not.

I stumbled out onto West Jackson Boulevard. The sun was disgustingly inviting. It was a rare Chicago spring day.

What if there was a “coming out of the shadows” rally going on at Union Park on April 26, 2001?

What if I walked to the park, and heard those brave students speak?

What if I marched over with them to the Federal Plaza at 3pm, as they plan to do?

Illinois DREAMers, I hold you in my heart.

Know that as I sit here in Cuernavaca, Morleos, Mexico, I stand in Union Park with you.

Believe it when I say that as I move through my day in the City of Eternal Spring, I also march with you through the streets of Chicago.

I’ll keep holding you in my heart. I’ll pray for you between breaths.

That’s the best that I can do today.

All you DREAMers, I love you. I truly do.

My Mexican Hat

I wrote this when I was eight or nine years old.

The swingin’ 70′s, y’all dig?

I’m half-Mexican, but you’d never guess that fact from My Mexican Hat.

Kids, I think this says everything of how much I was a product of my white, U.S. upper-middle class environment.

There’s clearly good and bad elements to that kind of upbringing. Funny and sad.

Now I talk about my Mexican husband, instead of my Mexican hat.

Ain’t that a kick in the head?

Peeps, sometimes you just can’t make this stuff up.

O.K. I gotta go and check out my inventory at Giselle’s Clothes Shop:)

This Jealous and Envious Immigration Activist

So today I have to tell on myself in the interest of becoming a better immigration activist.

Through my one-woman show, blogging and the like, I’ve met other women who are in my situation, i.e., their lives were turned upside down, either through their partner’s deportation, or their threat of deportation.

Meeting these women transforms my life. (Up to this point, I’ve yet to meet a man in my situation, i.e., the citizen spouse.)

Each woman who reaches out to me gives me the strength to continue. I think of them when I’m anxious about getting onstage. I think of them when I feel, “What’s the point?” when it comes to this blog.

I think of them when I feel that no one gets what I’ve been through.  And I feel less alone.

I believe that if I knew even just one of these women when R was first deported, I wouldn’t have hit the depths of depression and hopelessness that I hit when everything came down in April of 2001.

So far so good, right?

Well, here’s where it gets messy and embarrassing.

In the time that I’ve known some of these women, their spouse’s situation changed. Some of their husbands received their permanent residency.

Some of them are now on a path towards residency, when it originally was seen as pretty much impossible.

Others had a window open where a door was closed. Those windows are huge and welcoming.

Peeps, I’ve been surprised by my bitchy reactions when their news changes.

I don’t sleep easy at night, thinking that we’re all one step closer to immigration reform.

I don’t yell out in celebration, and run to tell R the news.

I become mean and small and hard. In those moments, I’m most definitely not an activist in the immigration reform movement. I’m not in this fight for the long haul.

What I am is lost in a thick fog of jealousy, envy, and anger.

I think about the fact that if  R’s situation never shifts, then I’m here in Mexico until at least April of 2021. I’ll be 51 years old.

And even then, even if the 20 years do have to go by, there’s still no guarantees if R and I will ever again walk hand-in-hand down the streets of Manhattan.

And I think, “Why their spouse, and not mine?”

That becomes a mantra. I wear it like a tattoo on my tongue.

But it’s funny and complicated the ways that our minds work: If the undocumented students, the DREAMers were able to get their US citizenship tomorrow, I’d have a big old party. I’d be excited by the number of activists who could come out of the shadows and fight for the rest of us.

But when it’s someone’s spouse, that’s when I get a little cuckoo in the head.

I want to throw out this jealousy and envy stew that I’ve been cooking in my cuckoo head for the past few months.

At the end of the day, that jealousy and envy stew isn’t sustenance to keep me fighting for immigration reform.

It’s poison.

And it’ll eat me alive, if I’m not vigilant.

Naming it to claim it, to take the shame away from it, y’all dig?

David Mamet at UT Austin: The Backlash

Hey Peeps.

I’ve been trying to find that worklife-bloglife balance, y’all dig? So this week was very much focused on the work, and not on the blog.

Today I’d like to donate The Deportee’s Wife blogspace to a guest writer. She is a friend, and fellow writer-activist-in-arms. Her support and incisive analysis made a tremendous difference with my one-woman show.

What she is speaking out about today is something that really hits home for me as a writer, artist, activist, and as a woman. The experience that Diana speaks about here is something that I’ve personally witnessed with other writers.

And it is time to call them on it.

Thank you for her bravery, as well as the bravery of the others mentioned in her statement.

We want this to go viral. Please do everything you can to get the word out. Gracias!

(Note: This statement was updated 3/10)

Dear Fellow Artists and Educators,

Stuff is happening in the Lone Star State. Bad stuff. Infuriating stuff. David Mamet is descending upon the University of Texas at Austin, and many of us are angry. Real angry. A bit of history: Last year, Mamet came to UT to conduct a writing seminar for several graduate and undergraduate playwrights and screenwriters. During the seminar, Mamet called Muslims terrorists and Arabs pedophiles. He also, unsurprisingly, spewed misogynist rhetoric in addition to his racist diatribe. Several students were shocked and appalled and took Mamet to task for his bigoted remarks. He countered with, “Why shouldn’t we pick on Arabs? They blew up New York City.” No really. He said that. After the seminar, these students took their concerns to the Ransom Center (the division of UT that invited him), in the hopes that Mr. Mamet and his hate speech would no longer be welcome at UT.

But a year has passed, and Mamet is coming back.

When the students found out about Mamet: Round 2, fellow MFA playwright Ben Snyder sent an email to Greg Curtis at the Ransom Center, wondering why this type of hate speech is allowed at UT. This sparked a long series of emails from students, echoing Ben’s concerns and imploring Curtis to address the situation. Curtis spoke to the Dean of UT and a professor from the Department of Theatre and Dance, but the problem is far from solved. Curtis decided that “there seemed to be no reason why the visit shouldn’t proceed as planned.” He goes on to belittle students’ concerns by skewing the discussion completely. He skirts the issue, inexplicably launching into accolades for the popularity of Mamet’s upcoming seminar : “In fact,” Curtis says, “the student response has been overwhelming, and we regret that we can accommodate only one student for every ten who applied.” Thanks, Mr. Curtis, for…responding to us?

We’d like the greater theatre community to know what’s up. Critics of Mamet’s plays and books often chalk up the playwright’s incendiary remarks to a bad boy desire to get a rise out of people. I’d like to take it upon myself to excise the euphemisms. David Mamet is a racist and a misogynist, both in his work and his life. Many have forgiven Mamet because of his talent, but his skills as a dramatist have let him get away with murder–literally, if you take into account that hate speech leads to the normalization of bigotry which leads to the waging of foreign wars.

Please forward this email to anyone and everyone. It’s time for the American Theatre to put its foot down. Today’s emerging theatre artists, like myself and several of my colleagues at UT, reject the notion that hateful language can pervade theatres and classrooms as long as it’s from the mouth of a legend. Mr. Mamet, we’re tired of listening. You can shut up now.

In solidarity,

Diana Grisanti
MFA Playwright
University of Texas at Austin

UPDATE 3/9 from Diana: On Wednesday, March 10th, at 2:00, we’re organizing a brown bag lunch in the Atrium of the Winship Drama Building. We will be addressing Mamet’s visit in particular, and then expanding the conversation to issues surrounding race and racism at UT and the greater community.