Lupita Aquino invites you to join her new book club\, La Comunidad Reads\, an author-inclusive club that aims to bui ld a space where Latine-authored books are magnified for all readers!
\ nFor the inaugural meeting of the La Comunidad Reads Book Club\, Lupita is sitting dow n with Rivemouth author Alejandra Oliva t o discuss her experiences with the U.S. immigration system as a translator and immigrant justice advocate. They will dive into her experience workin g in the U.S. immigration system\, the incredible importance of translatio n and how profound the loss of one's home country and identity can be as y ou assimilate in a new country. \;
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Alejandra Ol
iva is an essayist\, translator\, immigrant justice advocate\, and embroid
erer. She is a recipient of the 2022 Creative Nonfiction Whiting Grant. He
r writing has been included in \;Best American Travel Writing 2020\, w
as nominated for a Pushcart prize\, and was honored with an Aspen Summer W
ords Emerging Writers Fellowship. She was the Franke Fellow at the Yale Wh
itney Humanities Center in 2022. Read more at \;olivalejandra.com.
In th
is powerful and deeply felt memoir of translation\, storytelling\, and bor
ders\, Alejandra Oliva\, a Mexican-American translator and immigrant justi
ce activist\, offers a powerful chronicle of her experience interpreting a
t the US-Mexico border.
Having worked with asylum seekers since 20 16\, she knows all too well the gravity of taking someone's trauma and del ivering it to the warped demands of the U.S. immigration system. As Oliva' s stunning prose recounts the stories of the people she's met through her work\, she also traces her family's long and fluid relationship to the bor der--each generation born on opposite sides of the Rio Grande.
\nIn Rivermouth\, Oliva focuses on the physical spaces that make up different p hases of immigration\, looking at how language and opportunity move throug h each of them: from the river as the waterway that separates the U.S. and Mexico\, to the table as the place over which Oliva prepares asylum seeke rs for their Credible Fear Interviews\, and finally\, to the wall as the b ehemoth imposition that runs along America's southernmost border.
\nWith lush prose and perceptive insight\, Oliva encourages readers to appro ach the painful questions that this crisis poses with equal parts critique and compassion. By which metrics are we measuring who "deserves" American citizenship? What is the point of humanitarian systems that distribute ai d conditionally? What do we owe to our most disenfranchised?
\nAs in vestigative and analytical as she is meditative and introspective\, sharp as she is lyrical\, and incisive as she is compassionate\, seasoned interp reter Alejandra Oliva argues for a better world while guiding us through t he suffering that makes the fight necessary and the joy that makes it wort h fighting for.
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La Comunidad Reads with Lupita Aquino is generously su
pported by the DC Public Library Foundation.