The Predicament of Illegality: Undocumented Aliens in Contemporary American Immigration Fiction

The Predicament of Illegality: Undocumented Aliens in Contemporary American Immigration Fiction Kairos G. Llobrera Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2013 © 2013 Kairos G. Llobrera All rights reserved ABSTRACT The Predicament of Illegality: Undocumented Aliens in Contemporary American Immigration Fiction Kairos G. Llobrera This dissertation examines representations of undocumented aliens and explores the issue of illegality in contemporary American immigration fiction. It takes as a fundamental premise that in immigration, status matters. The importance of immigration status in the “real world” is evident not only in ongoing national debates but also in the daily experiences of immigrants, whose inclusion in or exclusion from America’s social, economic and political spheres is largely dependent on their status as documented or undocumented persons. This dissertation proposes that status likewise matters in literary representations of immigration. As this project demonstrates, immigration narratives often rely on conventional structures, themes and tropes that privilege the legal immigrant subject. Indeed, the legality of protagonists is often taken for granted in many novels about immigration. Thus, by foregrounding fundamental questions concerning legal status in the study of immigration literature, this dissertation aims to show the ways in which status informs, influences and directly shapes immigration novels. While this project broadly proposes the concept of status as an analytical lens, I approach this literary inquiry primarily by critically examining the “illegal alien” as the subject of immigration novels. Focusing on three novels that feature an undocumented immigrant protagonist – Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine, Gish Jen’s Typical American, and Mario Bencastro’s Odyssey to the North – this dissertation argues that, like its real-world counterpart who poses social, political and legal problems for the nation state, the figure of the illegal alien poses problems for the genre of immigration fiction, challenging its narrative conventions and calling into question the ideology of American exceptionalism that underpins it. By exploring the relationship between law and literature, this dissertation seeks to bring insight into the ways in which stories about immigration participate in the broader political discourse on U.S. immigration. On the one hand, it demonstrates how conventional immigration narratives perform cultural labor for the dominant legal regime by reaffirming normative modes of inclusion into the nation. On the other, it shows how literature, by wrestling with the question of illegality, can serve as means to critique the exclusionary practices of American law and society. The Predicament of Illegality: Undocumented Aliens in Contemporary American Immigration Fiction Table of Contents Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………..ii 1. Introduction…………………...……………………………………………………….1 2. Chapter One. Legal and Illegal Immigrants in Literature and in Historical Context……………………………………………………………………..………...30 3. Chapter Two. Unsettling Conventions: The Illegal American in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine………………………………………………………………………….….105 4. Chapter Three. A Narrative Fix: Solving the Problem of Illegality in Gish Jen’s Typical American…………………………………………………………………...166 5. Chapter Four. Undocumented America: Illegal Aliens and the Nation of Laws in Mario Bencastro’s Odyssey to the North….………………………………….…….220 6. Epilogue…………………………….……………………………………………....263 7. Bibliography…………………………..……………………………………………272 i Acknowledgements I am grateful first to Frances Negrón-Muntaner, my advisor, whose unwavering support and encouragement sustained me throughout my graduate studies at Columbia University and enabled me to complete this project. Many thanks to Rachel Adams for her guidance, especially during the latter stages of the dissertation. Thanks also to Marcellus Blount, John Gamber and Maja Horn for their helpful comments and feedback. I am grateful to Gary Okihiro, Donna Maeda, Monique Taylor and Leah Morrison, all of whom have made an impact on my intellectual development as an academic. A special thanks to Joy Hayton and Virginia Kay for helping me navigate Columbia’s administrative maze. For their invaluable friendship throughout graduate school and after, a heartfelt thank you to Hannah Gurman and Joe Alban, Karen Emmerich, Adela Ramos and Christian Gerzo, Ellen Ketels, Nathaniel Farrell, Alvan Ikoku, Elda Tsou, Richard So, Patricia Akhimie and Manu Chander, and Beth McArthur. For the encouragement they provided along the way, I am grateful to my friends in Los Angeles and New York: Johanna Sanchez, Luis Herrero, Theresa Hernandez, Juan Salazar, Monica Gomez, Ana Ibacache, Debbie Esparza, Esther Shin, Nate Mickelson, Kevin Koda, Christoph Marx, Ginny DeFrank, Susan Caldwell, and Stephen Perry. Thanks to my brother, Kratos, for always keeping me grounded and sane. I dedicate this work to my parents, Bienvenido and Lolita Llobrera, who made incalculable sacrifices in their own lives so that their children could receive a good education. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for your support and love. ii 1 Introduction “Legal, that is the word that saves.” –Roberto Quesada, Never through Miami In the opening chapter of Roberto Quesada’s Never through Miami (2002), Elías Sandoval, a Honduran sculptor who hopes to break into the arts scene of New York City, makes a necessary stop at the Miami International Airport to pass through customs and immigration. He waits in line for his documents to be examined by an immigration officer – “the final test” that would determine whether or not he is allowed through “the door [to] the United States.” He carefully assesses his situation, making sure he hasn’t done anything peculiar that would raise suspicion and jeopardize his entry. He has not brought with him “any avocados or chickens or dogs or butter or cardboard boxes or anything that is not allowed.” He has a clean record and a letter of invitation. He thinks to himself: “My documents are in order, my visa is valid, I look like the person in the photograph…Nothing is fake, everything is legal.” Yes, he meets “all the requirements of those who enter with their heads held high.”1 When Elias reaches the immigration officer, she asks him how long he plans to stay in the United States. A simple yet crucial matter, he knows his response could determine his fate. Giving too long a time “might be cause to deport him.” On the other hand, to suggest a shorter length of stay would be no better, for “he would have to leave on that day or sink to the miserable status of an illegal, something he had never even 1 Roberto Quesada, Never through Miami, trans. Patricia J. Duncan (Houston, TX: Arte Público Press, 2002), 1, 2. 2 considered.” To his dismay, he learns that no one on a limited visa can enter the United States without a return ticket, an important detail he has overlooked. Fulfilling Elias’ fear of being turned away, the immigration officer closes his passport “like a door through which the stamp he needed would never enter.”2 However, despite his travails at customs, Elias, in a fortunate twist of fate, is ultimately granted entry to the United States by another immigration officer who bends the rules for him. With his passport stamped, Elias continues his journey and makes it to New York, his final destination. Following the episode at customs and immigration, the book unfolds as a humorous yet revealing narrative about immigrant life in the United States, chronicling Elias’ experiences in the Big Apple as he navigates a new life in the city while attempting to maintain a long-distance relationship with his girlfriend in Honduras. Although painted in a lighthearted and comedic tone, the opening scene of Never through Miami gestures to a critical and indeed highly controversial issue that impacts the political, economic and cultural discourses of American society: illegal immigration. While Quesada centers the scene on Elias’ legal passage to the United States, he simultaneously calls attention to an entirely opposite way of entering the country. In fact, he highlights the matter of Elias’ legal entry precisely by introducing the possibility of its inverse. If Elias strives to be among “those who enter with their heads held high,” it is because there are countless others who sneak in through American borders with their heads hung low in fear or shame. If he places great value on his valid visa and his 2 Ibid., 3. 3 authentic documents, it is because there are others who either posses forged documents or have no documentation at all. In the scene at customs and immigration, Quesada signals to readers that there are two ways of coming to the United States – legally and illegally. And relatedly, there are also two ways of being an immigrant in America – documented and undocumented. Far from a benign juridical designation, one’s status influences practically every aspect of the immigrant experience, effecting significant consequences on one’s political, economic and social participation in American society. Whereas legal immigrants can claim a sense of pride and are free to pursue opportunities tied to the American Dream, illegal aliens bear a status associated with shame and are relegated to a social station that makes them extremely vulnerable to economic exploitation. While Quesada introduces two distinct immigration trajectories in the

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