After a long time coming, Humanizing Deportation at UC Davis has just published a digital version of my poems in both spanish and english, with my own photography, to show the world what asylum seekers go through.
Ana M. Fores Tamayo articles
Ana M. Fores Tamayo is ABD in Comparative Literature from New York University, though she presently lives in Texas. She never completed her PhD because motherhood got in the way: tenure and parenting do not mix. Thus she switched fields and worked in academic publishing for many years. She missed academia, however, and decided to return, only to find the Ivory Tower inhospitable to most educators. It did not take her long to take up their cause, beginning a petition for adjunct faculty, now with over 10,000 signatures. This grew into a Facebook forum for like-minded individuals to connect and organize.
The past few years, Fores Tamayo expanded her work to reach out to those rendered invisible. She is trying to raise awareness of these marginalized peoples in order to erase borders. Her labor naturally grew from her work with students: DREAMers, undocumented students, and eventually asylum seekers from Mexico and Central America. Although this is heart wrenching work, it is at the same time quite satisfying, being able to help others one to one. Working with diverse populations too, she is trying to make sure the disenfranchised become strong and have their voices heard. Her work can be seen in the Dallas/Fort Worth Refugee Support Network.
A New Poem For World Refugee Day
Two years ago on World Refugee Day, I published a very personal essay about my status as a refugee child, back then, yet what it is like now for refugees and asylum seekers. Today, I publish my own poem.
POEM: Brilliant Shadows in a World of Darkness
This poem — from a Masters student in Clinical Mental Counseling who is concerned about her prospects as a scholar in civil society — speaks the truth of many students of all races, all ethnicities, all creeds.
May Day: Helping with the Migration Crisis Across Borders
Many immigrant rights organizations hold Know Your Rights presentations, and if you call them, they will gladly come out to an event you will hold, to make immigrants aware of their rights.
Daybreak in Alabama by Langston Hughes
On Martin Luther King’s Day, I’d like to share this poem, which I have shared before but which I find so striking not only for its beauty but also for its essence of simplicity. If things could only be this way!
Confronting Fidel Castro’s Death Through Poetry
As the end of the year approaches, I am finally beginning to confront the death of Fidel Castro, who changed the course of my life forever. My relationship with him — even as an absence — has always been complex.
A Teacher and DREAMer Tries to Explain the Inexplicable to Children
I can not imagine the pain of being a teacher today, especially in a multilingual school. Talking to young angels who do not understand the madness of the past few weeks seems to me impossible
Every Vote Counts, Brick by Brick
We will not be able to change our inane and archaic immigration system unless you and I stand up to change things, from the bottom up. So please, go out and VOTE tomorrow, and take your proper ID.
On the Responsibilities of Citizenship
Our predecessors had to forsake their own countries. They left other safe harbors as well because they thought no one could ever offer them a better chance at safeguarding their liberties as this one true nation, yet that privilege now seems elusive.
The Justice of the Immigration Court and the Power of its Judge King
These refugees are fleeing for their lives; they are not economic refugees, as the immigration courts so often want to make everyone believe, or as many judges delude themselves into thinking.