The Predicament of Illegality: Undocumented Aliens

291 Pages·2012·1.81 MB·English

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 novel’s
exposition, he is also quick to point out an often-overlooked fact – namely, that the
demarcation between legal and illegal is soft. As historian Mae Ngai asserts, “The line
between legal and illegal can be crossed in both directions.”3 Even for Elias who enters
legally, the specter of illegality already looms as a potential threat. Despite having valid
papers, he fears “sink[ing] to the miserable status of an illegal” after his visa expires.
Indeed, the prospect of Elias becoming illegal only increases as the story progresses, for
he thinks less and less about returning to Honduras the longer he remains in New York.
At the end of the novel, we see Elias thinking of a way to secure a green card,
contemplating a marriage of convenience to an American-born Latina woman as his

3 Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2004), 6.
4
ticket to stay in the United States. Because status is a highly determining factor in the
immigrant experience, Elias desperately wants to avoid becoming illegal. Mindful of a
truth he has known since he landed in Miami, Elias knows that for the immigrant in
America, “Legal, that is the word that saves.”4
I begin this dissertation with a discussion of the amusing but insightful opening
scene of Never through Miami because it speaks to a fundamental premise of this project:
in immigration, status matters. That status matters in “the real world” is evident not only
in the ongoing national debates about immigration but also in the day to day 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. However, this dissertation proposes that status matters in literary
representations of immigration as well. As I will show, immigration narratives often rely
on conventional structures, themes and tropes that privilege the legal immigrant subject.
Curiously, authors of immigration stories rarely raise the question of status despite its
significant impact on the American immigrant experience. More often than not, the
legality of protagonists is taken for granted in many novels about immigration.
In the seemingly timeless and quintessential up-from-your-bootstraps American
Dream immigrant success story, the legal status of the protagonist is almost always
implicitly assumed. In order for the narrative to complete its arc and achieve the
expected happy conclusion, the protagonist’s right to be present and remain in the United
States must go unquestioned from the start. In other words, the only way the immigrant
can achieve the American Dream is by giving her the opportunity to pursue it, and that

4 Quesada, 1.