Courageous Voices of Immigrants and Transnationals of Color

«Pierre W. Orelus’s tale leaves us with a paradoxical, if implicit truth: This country both needs and fears immigrants. We need their energy and vitality. With software engineers from India, we need their economic contribution. With others, for example, Mexican construction workers or farm laborers, we need their youth and strong backs. With talented writers or artists, like Orelus, we need their powers of observation and what they can tell us about ourselves.» (Richard Delgado, from the Afterword)
«Pierre W. Orelus calls for us to think collectively about the experiences of transnational subjects of color. Personal and political, intellectual and poetic, the book provides a moving account of occupying the often terrifying and risky spaces of whiteness as a person of colour. Never turning away from scenes of violence, or from the task of accounting for racism as a lived reality, the book also shows how much knowledge and insight can be generated by describing experiences of not being at home in a world. As a result, this book gives its readers a real sense that out of struggle – and from the documentation of struggle – can come a sense of possibility and hope.» (Sara Ahmed, Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College, University of London, New Cross, London)
«In this fascinating interweaving of stories, poetry, theory, and research, Pierre W. Orelus surfaces the concealed stories of transnational immigrants of color as they negotiate the racial system in the United States. Through vivid testimony and insightful critical analysis, he documents the experiences of linguicism, racism, classism, sexism, and imperialism that transnational immigrants of color negotiate on a daily basis as they struggle to make a home in a frequently hostile land. He also illustrates the strengths and capacities, aspirations and talents, rich knowledge and critical perspectives transnational immigrants of color bring to these complex negotiations. In so doing, Orelus creates important counter-stories that challenge mainstream views about immigration and race, about the myths of meritocracy and open shores so central to the stock stories of this nation.» (Lee Anne Bell, Professor, Barnard College)
«Grounded in the embodied autoethnographic space of a black Haitian transnational border crosser, Pierre W. Orelus offers an interdisciplinary tour de force that speaks from the place of pain, trauma, and resistance as he negotiates the ways the transnational bodies of color deal with the macro and micro-violence of racism, xenophobia, and linguistic hegemony. It is exciting to see a book that also works within a comparative frame that creates a space for subaltern migrant voices in the U.S. nation-state and that allows readers to understand what pedagogy, knowledge, power, and respect mean for folks who enter a space of racialization and a climate that is inordinately hostile to non-white immigrants. This will be an immense aid in the college classroom to allow students to embrace the humanity of folks demonized by anti-immigrant hostility, and to create a pedagogy of empowerment.» (Arturo J. Aldama, Associate Chair and Associate Professor of Ethnic and Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies, Colorado University, Boulder)
«This is no happily-ever-after melting-pot story of progress with liberty and justice for all. Pierre W. Orelus has crafted a critical counter-meditation on the complexities and contradictions of ‘transnationals’ who become a ‘minority within minorities’ in the ‘whitestream’ of the United States. Adding to his own the voices of marginalized others from the Caribbean, Africa, and the Middle East, Orelus deconstructs conventional notions of home and identity and explores the quandaries of belonging in a diaspora,
«Pierre W. Orelus’s tale leaves us with a paradoxical, if implicit truth: This country both needs and fears immigrants. We need their energy and vitality. With software engineers from India, we need their economic contribution. With others, for example, Mexican construction workers or farm laborers, we need their youth and strong backs. With talented writers or artists, like Orelus, we need their powers of observation and what they can tell us about ourselves.» (Richard Delgado, from the Afterword)
«Pierre W. Orelus calls for us to think collectively about the experiences of transnational subjects of color. Personal and political, intellectual and poetic, the book provides a moving account of occupying the often terrifying and risky spaces of whiteness as a person of colour. Never turning away from scenes of violence, or from the task of accounting for racism as a lived reality, the book also shows how much knowledge and insight can be generated by describing experiences of not being at home in a world. As a result, this book gives its readers a real sense that out of struggle – and from the documentation of struggle – can come a sense of possibility and hope.» (Sara Ahmed, Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College, University of London, New Cross, London)
«In this fascinating interweaving of stories, poetry, theory, and research, Pierre W. Orelus surfaces the concealed stories of transnational immigrants of color as they negotiate the racial system in the United States. Through vivid testimony and insightful critical analysis, he documents the experiences of linguicism, racism, classism, sexism, and imperialism that transnational immigrants of color negotiate on a daily basis as they struggle to make a home in a frequently hostile land. He also illustrates the strengths and capacities, aspirations and talents, rich knowledge and critical perspectives transnational immigrants of color bring to these complex negotiations. In so doing, Orelus creates important counter-stories that challenge mainstream views about immigration and race, about the myths of meritocracy and open shores so central to the stock stories of this nation.» (Lee Anne Bell, Professor, Barnard College)
«Grounded in the embodied autoethnographic space of a black Haitian transnational border crosser, Pierre W. Orelus offers an interdisciplinary tour de force that speaks from the place of pain, trauma, and resistance as he negotiates the ways the transnational bodies of color deal with the macro and micro-violence of racism, xenophobia, and linguistic hegemony. It is exciting to see a book that also works within a comparative frame that creates a space for subaltern migrant voices in the U.S. nation-state and that allows readers to understand what pedagogy, knowledge, power, and respect mean for folks who enter a space of racialization and a climate that is inordinately hostile to non-white immigrants. This will be an immense aid in the college classroom to allow students to embrace the humanity of folks demonized by anti-immigrant hostility, and to create a pedagogy of empowerment.» (Arturo J. Aldama, Associate Chair and Associate Professor of Ethnic and Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies, Colorado University, Boulder)
«This is no happily-ever-after melting-pot story of progress with liberty and justice for all. Pierre W. Orelus has crafted a critical counter-meditation on the complexities and contradictions of ‘transnationals’ who become a ‘minority within minorities’ in the ‘whitestream’ of the United States. Adding to his own the voices of marginalized others from the Caribbean, Africa, and the Middle East, Orelus deconstructs conventional notions of home and identity and explores the quandaries of belonging in a diaspora,