I love to cry at graduations

At my sister Becca’s graduation from Brown yesterday (I remember when she was just knee high to a grasshopper, which is not to say that she isn't still really short, which she is), a young Swedish woman named Olivia Olsen, who studied literary translation during her time as an undergrad, gave one of the two senior orations. She spoke about translating as a way to bridge across cultures. She relayed an image crafted by a great 20th century Swedish poet named Tomas Transtromer, who, writing to friends on the other side of the iron curtain, described his thoughts as an airship floating above terrestrial, political walls.

It was an excellent speech that, if it was at times unable to avoid the call of the platitudinous with which the moment of graduation seduces virtual all speakers, was notable to me for one turn of phrase in particular. Describing the political barriers of our time as an echo of Transtromer’s walls in his time, she said “these walls are not metaphorical, but they begin in our minds.” I’ve always said that Brown and Sweden makes a winning team.

The least metaphorical of the walls she was talking about – though perhaps somewhat virtual, right? – is the one along the Mexican-American border, so it was to that one that my mind turned, and to the news I had read on Saturday: that 270 mostly Guatemalan illegal immigrants had been, in the space of four days, detained, charged as criminals, brought in for hearings in makeshift temporary courtrooms, 10 at a time, and sentenced to 5 months in prison, to be followed by deportation.

My waitress two mornings ago, immigrant herself, saw me shaking my head as I read the story. I looked up at her as she re-filled my coffee mug and she asked “What can I do?” I didn’t know what to say. Immigration is, to me, the most complex of political issues; I don't know whether or not those who were rounded up in the raid should be allowed to work here. But what walls in our minds indeed, that we can call these people criminal, and that we can deny them due process, in America.