Monday, April 12, 2021, 11:30 AM – 1 PM EDT

Julie Schwietert Collazo, 97Ox, 99C, Co-Founder and Director, Immigrant Families Together (IFT), and Rosayra (“Rosy”) Pablo Cruz, Guatemalan immigrant and activist for others like her

“Shifting the Locus of Power in Immigration Narratives”

Historically, U.S.-published narratives about immigration and immigrants-- both non-fiction and fiction -- are written not from the perspectives of people who have lived migration experiences, but by (usually white) journalists whose commitment to the ideal of objectivity and often limited grasp of relevant history obscure crucial aspects of such experiences. While there are notable exceptions (namely Reyna Grande's memoirs and the memoirs of undocumented and formerly undocumented writers like José Antonio Vargas and Karla Cornejo Villavicencio), the publishing industry continues to privilege white writers' narratives of experiences they have not lived. In today’s Lunch Colloquium, an asylum seeker from an indigenous background and a white, U.S.-born (and Oxford-and-Emory-educated) writer, co-authors of The Book of Rosy (named one of the best non-fiction books of 2020) will discuss the experiences that yielded that book (including Rosy’s long separation from two of her children) and what they’ve learned from their mutual endeavor about the need to shift the locus of power in immigration narratives for more just and inclusive storytelling.