Welcome to Alienhood đ«
A meeting place for ideas on politics, law, and living at the margins
MY PROFESSOR KEPT looking behind me, at the back of the room, as if a ghost watched. I had asked her to meet me a little while before the class she taught, a journalism seminar called âTelling the Truth,â because I wanted to talk about something. I had calculated the risks and the positivesâshe was a Pulitzer finalist, seemed unafraid to call things immoral, and might be able to help me get a job in journalismâand decided to tell her.
âIf I were you, I would lie through my fucking teeth,â she said, her gaze returning to me as soon as the words came out.
Someone must have walked in through the open door, because I remember little after that other than her scribbling an immigration lawyerâs email on a piece of paper. I knew that in journalism, the first command was to always report the truth. Iâm certain she meant well, but that moment changed something for me. From then on, I understood that I could not become a writer if I didnât first tell the world the deepest truth about myself: that for years, I had been living as an undocumented immigrant. Last summer, two years after that conversation and ten after coming to America, I did.
As we say in Spanish, it was a desahogo, an undrowning. I didnât expect to feel immediately unburdened, because I had been telling some very close friends for years and bothering others with my anxiety-ridden rants all through the eight-month-long editing process. But time and again, when I went to do my little survival mental math in my headâDoes this person know about my status? Is it safe to tell them? Do they need to know?âI remembered that was a muscle I could gladly allow to atrophy.
And suddenly, I could imagine new futures.
What is Alienhood? And what is âalienhoodâ?
This newsletter is an attempt to reject common but vexatious narratives about undocumented immigrants: that we were all âbrought hereâ by our parents at age two, that we donât understand this countryâs laws, that we are irredeemable criminals. Every day that we manage to stay in this country, despite a system that often aims to diminish us in numbers and break us in spirit, is an act of survival.
Now for the practical stuff: Each Friday, Iâll be using this newsletter as an exercise in truth-telling, with all the messiness, sappiness, and absurdity that comes with being human. Because life is nonlinear, the format of the newsletter will inevitably vary: some weeks Iâll do longer essays on ideas about politics and law, others Iâll send along some poems or reflections, and others still Iâll be interviewing other immigrants or writers (many of them friends!) who are trying to make their own meaning despite the fact that they are from marginalized communitiesâor, perhaps, because of it. To foster conversation, weâll also be having some discussion threads.
Which brings me to âalienhoodâ itself. I went back and forth on this newsletterâs title. I originally pitched it as Alien Life, but the more I thought about it, the less right it felt. I was drawing inspiration from a Lucille Clifton poem (yes, that one) about how people of colorâspecifically Black womenâbuild a kind of life despite having the odds stacked against them, and how that alone is worthy of celebration. Being undocumented often puts us in the position of making way out of no way, and thatâs what this newsletter seeks to celebrate. Not so much that weâve been rendered âillegal,â but rather that living outside the law has made us see the world differently. Alienhood is, in some ways, a kind of personhood.
Something similar, Iâm sure, could be said of other experiences. Because of the insidiousness of discrimination and racism throughout U.S. history, millions of people who are not undocumented also live in a kind of legal limbo, unable to access the benefits of full citizenship. This newsletter is also meant to be a space to understand subcitizenship across identities.
This may sound like a lot. But like everything human, the most this newsletter can be is a work in progress. Thatâs why your feedback is very much welcome.
Wait, waitâwho are you?
Fair point!
Iâm a writer and soon-to-be lawyer. I have written in lots of different places, including Politico Magazine, The Atlantic, Vox, The Hill, and the Brennan Center for Justice. Iâm a contributing editor at Politico Magazine, where I published the magazineâs first article in Spanish and have reported on everything from the migrant caravanâs democracy, to Kamala Harrisâ law school years, to a new push for reparations for Japanese Latinos. I went to law school to better understand the doctrines that have long kept undocumented people, and other communities, in a state of constitutional abandonment; now, as I near the end, itâs become clear to me that writing and law cannot exist detached from one another. The narratives that were once excluded now need to become central.
This year, I am one of three members of the inaugural cohort of the Joel Gay Creative Fellowship, a program started by Roxane Gay to honor her late brother. Iâm incredibly honored to have her support and mentorship as I launch this project.
I am also a fellow of the Periplus Collective, a mentorship program for writers of color. I donât know how I ended up being a writer, but I do know that going to public high school in Orlando, Florida, had something to do with it.
Originally from Maracaibo, Venezuela, I live in Washington, D.C., with my partner and our dog, Pilot Jones. You can find me on Twitter @jesusrodriguezb.
I hope youâll stick around, subscribe, and tell your friends about this little experiment Iâm trying to build here. If you have something to say, please leave a comment or hit my line at jesusrodriguezab@gmail.com.
Thatâs all for this week. Thank you for reading.
I love seeing this launched! This is going to be fantastic!
What a brilliant introduction to your newsletter. Can't wait to read all that is to come. I am so proud of you!! xx