Free The Weight Of Shadows: A Memoir Of Immigration & Displacement Ebooks To Download
Tracing his story of becoming a US citizen, José Orduña’s memoir explores the complex issues of immigration and assimilation.José Orduña chronicles the process of becoming a North American citizen in a post-9/11 United States. Intractable realities—rooted in the continuity of US imperialism to globalism—form the landscape of Orduña’s daily experience, where the geopolitical meets the quotidian. In one anecdote, he recalls how the only apartment his parents could rent was one that didn’t require signing a lease or running a credit check, where the floors were so crooked he once dropped an orange and watched it roll in six directions before settling in a corner. Orduña describes the absurd feeling of being handed a piece of paper—his naturalization certificate—that guarantees something he has always known: he has every right to be here. A trenchant exploration of race, class, and identity, The Weight of Shadows is a searing meditation on the nature of political, linguistic, and cultural borders, and the meaning of “America.”
Paperback: 240 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press; 1 edition (April 12, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0807074012
ISBN-13: 978-0807074015
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 0.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #563,216 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #107 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National > Hispanic & Latino #381 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Specific Demographics > Hispanic American Studies #782 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Emigration & Immigration
The USA definitely needs reasonable, respectful discussions on immigration reform, but this book does not provide them.I eagerly anticipated reading it, since immigration deserves serious dialogue (the World Economic Forum considers refugee flow the #1 global concern). By way of credentials, I’ve worked with overseas refugee/ immigrant communities and am a primary clinician at a health center with a new program dedicated to refugees. We care!This book is at one extreme of a spectrum. Here's its essence: "There’s no humane or ethical way to deny people who live in countries riddled with violence, poverty, and corruption the right to try to make a livable life in ‘your’ affluent country, much less so when ‘your’ country’s government has been deeply involved in creating the conditions being fled.” p.199 in my edition. This is a false dichotomy – supporting the humanity of those who seek to enter the US does not mean supporting an automatic entitlement to enter and stay at will. The argument also provides a false cause -- although the US government has given plenty of people (including citizens) varying degrees of a hard time up to and including death, to hubristically say this is the dominant cause of all the world’s vastly complex, multifactorial problems is to oversimplify far beyond usefulness, and will deeply obscure an ongoing search for a decent, reasonable solution.The book's main points are overcome by an intensely negative, shallow, emotional onslaught against the author’s adopted home. Indeed, it deserves two stars because it helps us understand an immigrant who despises the country they adopted (a valuable perspective, given recent events in Belgium).
As a legal immigrant myself (I moved here from Europe in the mid-80s), I am strongly in favor of an increase in legal migration. For one, we are terribly short on highly skilled labor. If you ask businesses in general what their toughest challenges are, hiring skilled employees is almost always at or near the top. I say all this because when I picked up this book, I admittedly knew not a whole lot about it, other than that it dealt with "migration and displacement".Once the book arrived and I started reading, I knew I was in trouble pretty quickly. The book is written by a Mexican who came to this country as a two year old with his "undocumented" parents but who eventually was able to move over to legal status and in fact is now a US citizen. Good for him! One might think that there would be some measure of gratitude and appreciation on the part of the author, but you might be wrong. On the contrary, the book can be viewed as a 240 page rant about illegal immigration. Indeed, the author feels "anger and resentment toward a punitive and racist government regarding its treatment of undocumented immigrants". Yes, you read right: the Obama administration is in the eyes of this author "punitive and racist". But wait! there is more! A good part of the book is devoted to his eventual obtaining US citizenship, which leads the author to reflect about the "absurdity" of getting a certificate for something he has "always" known: "I have a right to be here". Yes, you read right. The author states it as a matter of fact: all illegal immigrants have a "right" to be in the US. Never mind that of course US citizens don't have a right to be in Mexico or any other country without the proper visa or other paper work.
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