Alejandra Oliva on Writing Her New Memoir, ‘Rivermouth,’ and Fighting for Immigration Justice

What has surprised you most about your work as an interpreter? 

I think the way that it causes you to interact with people. It’s a really interesting and sometimes kind of tricky relationship, depending on the formality of the setting. The ways that you are present and not present in the room, the ways that people are able or willing to talk to you or not talk to you, and how the relationship triangulates between you and the people that you’re translating for, I think all that has been really interesting.

What do you wish people understood better about immigration right now? 

Very often, when we are reading about immigration or talking about immigration at any level, we are talking about numbers; like, this many people are here, it’s this many people from this country, you have to wait this many months to get this visa. I feel like the disconnect there is that every single number represents somebody’s life. Like, it’s not just this many people crossing the border; it’s this many individuals with individual stories and reasons for being there. It’s not just that it takes 18 months to get a work permit; it’s what a person is doing to survive for those 18 months when having a job could endanger their immigration status, but not working is basically impossible in the world and the society that we live in now. I think the understanding that it’s not just about the numbers, but the people that are behind them, is the thing that’s really missing from a lot of people’s understanding.

How did you care for yourself while writing the heavier parts of this memoir? 

I think this is an issue that plagues anybody who’s in a kind of helping profession. The nice thing about writing a book is also sometimes the hard thing about writing a book, which is that it can take a really long time, and if you’re drafting it before you have a contract or before you’re in touch with anyone, then you’re not beholden to anybody else’s timeline. So I was able to rest when I needed to; like, if I had had a particularly difficult week at work or if there was a lot going on in the immigration world, I could take a step back and say, “You know, this is not a week where I am going to be able to emotionally or logistically sit down with the book and do good work, so I don’t have to.” I think that kind of space and that kind of ability to rest is a luxury that people very often don’t have when they are doing direct services, or dealing with the immigration system themselves. Within that, it’s like, there’s this deadline coming up, you need to be able to talk about your experiences in this very specific way, and you don’t get the luxury of deciding when and how you’re going to engage with the difficult things.