Overview:
The walls that nations build between themselves, both real and imagined, are often hidden in plain sight from most North Americans. Not anymore, not for me at least.
Illegal: An American Sneaking Across Borders tells the story of my deportation from Ecuador and the struggle to get back to the girl and revolution I left behind. I was twenty-five years old and sure that I had found something worth fighting for, so two days after being arrested and flown away; I snuck back in from Colombia. Over the next year I made four additional, illegal, land crossings. I bribed high-ranking police officials, played cards with cocaine smugglers, traded deportation stories with all different types of people, and slowly began to understand the reality of the modern border. I met the revolutionary president, Rafael Correa, and gave up everything for the girl – even as I fell out of love with both of them and came apart under the stress of my everyday life.
Illegal is broken into five chapters, or crossings, each one focusing in on the small window of time when I was actually on my way to or from the border. The five chapters are preceded by a prologue which summarizes the previous two years I spent in Ecuador and the evolution of a love affair and political revolt that eventually led to my arrest and deportation. The manuscript is a concise 45,000 words and includes photos, maps and illustrations that will help the reader along their journey. It is both an easy read and thought provoking; a compelling narrative that aims to shatter the reader’s perspective on borders.
Illegal weaves three overlapping narratives together; love, revolution, and borders, and thus appeals to a wide market. Millions of immigrants in the United States, aspiring world travelers, political junkies, and anyone who enjoys an against-all-odds love story, are a potential audience. Just like the airline workers who forged the plane ticket and the anonymous bus passengers who protected me from the police, many readers will sympathize with this story.
I am fascinated by the modern border and have closely studied the people that cross them illegally for the better part of the past decade. I have published articles on Ecuadorian politics and culture in Adbusters, and South American Explorers Magazine as well as in a number of newspapers. In addition to my own five trips, I have heard scores of detailed border crossing and deportation stories from all different types of people, and have helped others cross on three separate occasions. The personal is political, and Illegal gets to the heart of, and humanizes, the ongoing immigration debate.