Refugee Transitions

October 27, 2012 by Jess in immigrant rights, immigration, refugees | Leave a comment

Some of you know that I’m currently working on a novel set in Mogadishu, Somalia. Trying to connect with the Somali immigrant community here in the U.S. has been harder than I expected. Understandably, due to privacy concerns, Somali immigrants and the organizations that service them are careful, protecting people who are vulnerable. Furthermore, the media spotlight on the Somali immigrants who have secretly left the U.S. to fight for radical Islamist army al-Shabaab (which has ties to al-Qaeda) may have contributed to the unease related to writers who have an interest in Somalis.

Thankfully, there have been two organizations that have leapt up with waving hands and said, “I’ll help! I’ll help!” One of those organizations is the Somali-run Somali Youth League of San Diego. They were great–and continue to be great! I’m planning another trip to San Diego to meet with Somali families there, perhaps in December.

The other organization that leapt up to help is based here in the Bay Area: Refugee Transitions. Because Refugee Transitions was so kind with their offer to help, I sat up and paid some attention to what they’re doing and why. I like to promote organizations doing good in the world. And Refugee Transitions is right up my alley. Instead of perpetuating dependence (all too often a problem with non-profit organizations), Refugee Transitions offers resources that help refugee families become self-sufficient in the U.S. So they focus efforts by offering classes in the English language, ways for immigrants to learn job skills, support for academics. and imparting critical cultural knowledge about life in the U.S. They provide tutoring, ESL classes, citizenship classes, summer camps for kids, and support for families–connecting them to community resources while preparing them to do it on their own.

Having spent a number of years in my life working full-time and/or volunteering in both religious and non-profit charitable organizations, let me tell you that the goal of self-sufficiency is the gold standard, a goal I completely support.

Refugee Transitions serves more than a thousand people from 43 different countries, all of this with a limited staff and a backbone of volunteers. Understandably, they are always in need of volunteers. One of their biggest needs right now is home-based and after-school tutors. They provide tutoring in Oakland, San Francisco, and the South Bay, so its likely you can help out without traveling too far.

So I want to appeal to my fellow Stanford alums and other Bay Area friends who might be willing to sacrifice a few hours a month, or one afternoon a week, to tutor. If you can’t do it, but know somebody who can, please spread the word! Click here to find out more.

Culture Shock and the Writing Life

The thing that is both wonderful and terrible about immersing yourself in another culture is how quickly you find yourself humbled by your own flawed expectations about how the world should work.

When I first arrived, I stayed with a Zimbabwean immigrant family on the outskirts of Johannesburg. They run a small local paper, employ Malwaian immigrant workers, and live lives riddled by the contradictions of Zimbabwe/South Africa border politics. Currently, I’m staying with a white South African and her American husband in Pretoria, who have introduced me to local and national politics, the internal world of the ANC, and liberal white culture in South Africa. Read More

Just Be Your Quirky Self

I am reading Ariel Gore’s How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead because, of course, my daily angst is all about how I’m not a famous writer yet. It’s a great book. Read it. You can buy it directly from Ariel herself at Yo Mama’s Bookshop and she will make more money than if you buy it from Amazon or in your bookstore. That way, you are supporting your local artist (or not so local, if you don’t live anywhere near Portland) instead of the evil corporation that is, in this case, Three Rivers Press (a division of Random House, which is also my publisher, and WHOM I LOVE.) I love Ariel’s DIY philosphy which pervades every page of the book. She’s not saying, “Don’t go with the big presses,” she’s simply pointing out the myriad of ways (yes, Ariel, I used the word myriad!) to get your writing out into this world.

Here’s my problem with books like this one: Now I want to be an anarchist! Now I want to create and print hip zines and declare my allegiance to the underworld! Now I want to become a radical feminist lesbian communist revolutionary and publish things that really change the world!

Only my problem is, I don’t know anybody in the underworld. Unless you count the homeless teenagers I work with every Friday afternoon in San Francisco’s Haight district.

And frankly, I’ve never been good at revolution: I was never into the punk scene; I have always been pretty straight (with some bi inklings on occasion, like when I kissed a girl on the neck and thought, “Wow, she smells really nice,” but that sure never flowered into full-on gay fruition); and unfortunately for my image, I never joined a revolutionary movement (but I am pretty damn sure I would look sexy in fatigues, holding a machine gun. SEE ABOVE & BELOW!).

I’m just this pacifist, who isn’t very radical about it though I kind of want to be; a truly terrible Catholic–at least, any conservative Catholic would be pretty much appalled by my viewpoints which I won’t list here for fear of appalling a number of conservative Catholics who read my blog regularly, but they’re probably all the things they’d guess at anyway, that anybody reading this would guess at; an advocate for immigrants and a lover of all things African except, of course, genocide and kleptocracies; recognized by some as a hippie, others as a lover of reggae & Afro-pop & indie music; and obsessed with studying liberation movements of all kind, especially those that link religion with Marxism, or religion with violent revolution.

Probably the weirdest thing about me is how much I like teenagers, whether they’re dorky, goth, depressed, cool, smart, not so smart, suicidal, druggies, pretend druggies, alternative, mainstream, artsy-fartsy, science-geek, etc etc so on and so forth. The only teenagers I don’t like are cheerleaders, which I have tried to get over so I could like Claire of save the cheerleader, save the world fame.

And that, of course, is all part of Ariel’s message in the end: just be your own quirky self, gravy stains on your T-shirt and all.

Yeah, so I guess I won’t be going the way of radical revolutionary anytime soon. But I am becoming a publisher, or rather, I have become a publisher, and I hope to venture into the world of ezines and zines in the next couple of months, and in the meantime, I keep writing my stuff for publication in traditional formats.

It’s all part of feeding the beast.

Facing Two Worlds: Growing Up On La Frontera

Here is the text of the speech I gave at REFORMA’s national conference last weekend, for those who are interested.

When I was a teenager growing up in El Paso, I was a voracious reader, consuming on average a book every day, most of them young adult novels. In all those young adult novels I consumed, I only encountered the world I was growing up in once, in a suspense novel by Lois Duncan. In the novel, a teenager’s sudden and mysterious death in Albuquerque draws his sister into a world of danger. To fulfill one of her brother’s debts, she ends up smuggling drugs across the El Paso/Juarez border. Okay, so….the world portrayed in that novel was not EXACTLY my world, my border, since I never encountered the harsh world of drug smuggling. But it was the closest I ever came to seeing my world in a book as a teenager. And it made it seem–well, exciting. Different.

My parents rather unusually chose not to live in the neighborhoods where other professionals gravitated. Read More

Adequate health care in South Africa

July 2, 2008 by Jess in Africa, healing, health, immigrant rights, South Africa | Leave a comment

According to this article, immigrants and refugees have trouble getting access to health care in South Africa, and have been “unlawfully” denied access to HIV medicines andÂ discriminated against.Â That’s a tragedy, no doubt, and something needs to be done–but the whole health care system in SA is overwhelmed, and citizens struggle to get adequate health care, too.Â Still, here’s an example of a true tragedy:

“MSF (Doctors Without Borders) has noted a number of cases where female refugees were ambushed and raped immediately after crossing the border between Zimbabwe and South Africa in the last few months. ‘We came across a young girl who was raped after crossing the border in Musina, for example. She went to the local clinic after the rape but was sent away. MSF found her five days later, but by then it was too late to provide her with post-exposure prophylaxis,’ says Whittall. Post-exposure prophylaxis decreases the risk of HIV infection if administered within 72 hours after the exposure to the virus.”

The Riots in South Africa

May 25, 2008 by Jess in Africa, Cultural categories, immigrant rights, peace, politics, power, race, rape, Social Issues, South Africa, violence, war | 1 Comment

The violence in South Africa (which started in Jo’burg) has spread to Cape Town and, I hear from friends, to Durban. My Zulu languageÂ teacher, who is Ndebele and from Zimbabwe, says that one of the reasons Zimbabweans are being attacked (beyond the recent influx of possibly up to a million refugees) is because there was a higher literacy rate in Zimbabwe than in other countries (including South Africa) and so immigrants from Zimbabwe never had problems finding jobs. This article concurs with my teacher, claiming that the problem isn’t xenophobia but jealousy, while these comments on the spreading violence remind South Africans that Zimbabwe and other southern African countries offered shelter to tens of thousands of South Africans during apartheid.

Njau Kimemia, a Kenyan working in South Africa, has written an editorial,Â claiming that racial profiling is still occuring in South Africa at the airport–a decent black, he says, will be treated worse than a drug-smuggling Caucasion.

Police officer tries to defend foreign immigrants in Jo’burg.

photo taken from Zimbabwe Situation

adoption & Mexico

March 6, 2008 by Jess in adoption, America, anti-immigration, Cultural categories, immigrant rights, U.S.-Mexico Border, women | 1 Comment

I just got off the phone with a good friend of mine who was telling me a story about a lady she knows, a naturalized citizen,Â who onlyÂ recently got the visa approved for her son, whom she adopted from Mexico. She kept him in the U.S. for five years, illegally, because it took that long for the U.S. to approve the adoption and grant him a visa. And it took a letter from my friend before the U.S. would finally grant the visa.

My friend was at the immigration offices when the visa was approved. She said it made her cry to hear the immigration officers refusing to speak Spanish to people trying to get their visas approved; she said it made the entire experience confusing and upsetting: “Until that day, I didn’t understand,” she said. “But now I know why so many people hate us.” I wish I’d been a fly on the wall. But I’ve been down to the DMV to get my driver’s license. Take that kind of bureaucracy, multiply it by ten or even twenty, and throw in a language barrier and tons of suspicion–and yeah, it’s got to be pretty bad. Getting a license at the DMV is bad. The other, it’s got to be hellish.

Free Speech/Anti-Immigration: Mackenzie Malone is in the news

September 13, 2007 by Jess in anti-immigration, Bay Area, Books & News, censorship, Children's, Cultural categories, free speech, immigrant rights, politics, Social Issues, The Confessional, U.S.-Mexico Border | 2 Comments

While I find this student’s editorial abhorrent, I do stand behind his right to write it and, if published, not be bullied or attacked, as he claims he was. Further,Â I agree with the court’s ruling that “upheld a high school journalist’s right to write an anti-immigrant editorial and affirmed California’s strong legal protections for students’ free speech.” The schoolÂ chose to publishÂ his editorialÂ in the first place and then it revoked the remaining issues of the paper when it received complaints.Â Read More

immigrant rights

Refugee Transitions

Adequate health care in South Africa

adoption & Mexico

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