In a year like no other, immigrant women of all walks of life reflect on the ever-changing meaning of home and belonging.
Introducing Real People. Real Lives and Marlene
Hello! Welcome to the podcast Real People. Real Lives. Women Immigrants of New York, a storytelling project from New Women New Yorkers. Real People. Real Lives highlights a diverse picture of immigrant women living in the city. It elevates these narratives, moving beyond statistics and political rhetoric.
In the Summer and Fall of 2020, we interviewed immigrant women from all walks of life. They were selected through an open call or reached out directly, to ensure the participation of women from different backgrounds, and affected by the pandemic in various ways.
The participants talked about their immigrant experience within the backdrop of a year like no other – marked by the pandemic, Black Lives Matter and the presidential election. Each story you will hear is a unique mix of determination, hope, challenges, and victories – small and big.
Today, meet Marlene, an accountant from Chile. New York was supposed to be a quick stop on her way to Ireland. She ended up staying, driven by personal reasons and the military dictatorship in Chile. Life hasn’t been easy though. In this interview, Marlene reflects on the challenges she has faced as an immigrant and after she converted to Islam.
Coming to the US (01:37-05:51)
In Chile, I was studying English. I was being successful, I was working well, I was saving for an apartment, I could afford to buy a car. My dream was to go to college, in Chile. I couldn’t because we didn’t have money. I was very frustrated about it and I blamed the dictatorship for that. Pinochet was the dictator.
When I came here I came here on vacation for 2 months, I was invited by my fiance, who was an Irishman. We met at a protest in Chile, in Santiago. He was in Chile as a missionary. After I think four years he was finishing his stay in Santiago. He was going back to Ireland. He stopped by New York because he has his sister here and family and then he invited me to come here in vacation. He was supposed to take me to Ireland to meet his family because we were going to be married. That didn’t happen, everything went south and we broke up, I decided to stay here and try to find a job and see if anything could work out. I didn’t know the reality here. At that point I didn’t know the weight and the significance of living here illegally. I didn’t know all the different layers of the law of being here, in tourist visa, or not being able to save money for my pension, or not being able to have an American insurance, everything that comes with or without having a legal status. When you don’t have documents it is really difficult to find a job that pays you anything that resembles a real salary.
I’m a US citizen for many many years. That process was really eye-opening and painful. It was so many years ago because when i was starting legalizing my status, I did through an arranged marriage. That in itself was terrible because I was in a relationship with somebody else, who was also an illegal immigrant. On top of everything, the immigrant officer was a crook, he wanted money to do the paperwork. He threatened us when we went to the interview. He showed us behind his desk piles of files from immigrants that he would not process because they wouldn’t give him money. I reported him to his superior and this man was dismissing me because “I am nobody, I am an immigrant, I want my citizenship”, and his supervisor was telling me that, you know, “your marriage is not even true, so we can take away your green card. Forget about the citizenship”. That was really painful and hard and difficult. Finally they transferred me to other officer and I got my citizenship. 4-5 years later, I was contacted by the FBI because they caught him doing this, and not only that, he was also giving out fake social security numbers, he was an officer of INS. He was taking away green cards, he was denying citizenship he was doing so many wrong things, and the FBI wanted to interview me to face him. But, if I get untangled, because these was a ring of people, the immigration system with other people outside, immigrants, you know, selling them social securities, it was a whole thing here in Florida, and Miami and other places. I didn’t pursue anything and then I don’t know if he convicted or not, the investigation came to the news but in a very small thing.
On being a Muslim immigrant woman in America (05:56-13:15)
In Chile, the only religion that we knew that existed was the Catholic church. My family has always been a very religious family, we would go to a church every Sunday, we attend Sunday school. I have a very inquisitive mind, I am always asking questions. When I was going to church on Sunday school I studied about the Trinity, about Jesus… And the priest, the teacher at that time: no we don’t ask those questions. As I grew older and I understood more, my curiosity grew. I wanted to learn more and more. Always I had these inside of me. During the time I didn’t have the papers and I was with an Moroccan guy, I wanted to kill myself. The despair was so deep for both of us, we were in the end of the rope, we were just “that’s it, not worth living, was really bad”. I went to multiple different religions, looking for the answers. Nothing would fulfill these emptiness that I had inside of me. Then I turned into the internet looking for answers Then I found WhyIslam.org. It was a website, they had a simple form, so you can learn the religion of islam, we can send you a Koran, which is the world of God, pamphlets and everything. So I sent the form and they sent me a box. I started reading the book and then I started to find all the answers to my questions, one by one. I was so happy and I was crying and I was laughing and I couldn’t put the book down. I read it at once the whole thing, that’s how I became aware of Islam.
I became muslim after 09/11. I was very young, much younger than now. I went in wholeheartedly, with my heart and soul. It was good being around muslim and being on my own at home and I was also living by myself. But when I went out it was bad, because people would spit on me, they would scream at me, they would yell, they would insult me, push me. Also, at that time, I lost my job. I was unemployed for 4 years because I was wearing the hijab and nobody would hire me. When I was working, in 2000, I enrolled in NYU for my bachelors degree. I didn’t want to quit my studies because that was my dream, I started to taking loans…that I am still paying, I have been paying for 12 years already. I still have 40.000 dollars to go. And I have paid that much or maybe more in twelve years.
After I became muslim, then I continued going to school, I was discriminated by the teachers. Because I was hearing my hijab, the classmates wouldn’t talk to me, they wouldn’t work with me in groups. There are so many misconceptions about being muslim: “who is forcing you to wear that?”, “Is your husband forcing you to do these?”. I am single what are you talking about? It’s my choice. That was really insulting because if you say to a woman who forces you to do something, you are telling her you she doesn’t have intelligence or capacity to think for yourself to make decisions for yourself, that you need a man to force you to do something [sic]. You’re subdue to somebody else, you don’t have your own will, you don’t think, have no intelligence.
I’ll stick by my values, I’ll stick by what I believe is correct and I won’t change. When I came to New York I was kind of disappointed of what I saw, what I heard, what I lived through. People would say one thing in front of you, but they are thinking something else and doing something else. I realized that very early on when I came here. I remember I went to an agency for a temp job and, then, when I walked in, one of the white woman said to another white woman: “oh at least she’s not Black”. In my face! When I’d say to my friends: “they are discriminating against Black people”, they would be “no no no, you know, there are anti-discrimination laws here, they can protect themselves”. Then I’d say: “I saw these and heard that, experience that”. That is so much hypocrisy.
I really fought to keep my own identity my own culture and customs and not to be assimilated. I remember the executive director in my office, she pushed me, she insulted me, she was calling me ninja and making jokes and everything in a business meeting because I was wearing a black hijab. Many other people were in the meeting, nobody said anything. I reported officially to HR. They didn’t do anything. When we talk about for instance what happened to George Floyd… when this happened, many people was surprised like this never happened. It happens everyday, it happens all the time, it’s been happening for 100 years, never stopped happening. Slavery never ended, it is new slavery, we make up with a coding, we sugarcoat but it is slavery, and multiple levels there is slavery in the US now. We as immigrant are slaves. Women are slaves. Black are slaves. We are slaves because we are second, third, fourth class citizens. We’re not treated equally, we don’t earn equally, we are not given the same opportunities. I don’t understand why people will be like : Oh my God, how is this happening?” It happens since the beginning, when I came here in 1990 the first thing I saw was discrimination. Everybody was denying it, how? Not that it was discrimination against me, I saw against Black people. In conversations, people would say: “Blacks, they don’t want to work, they are lazy, they are ignorant, they want to live on welfare.
I doubt the American Dream ever existed. If it did, it just for the white Europeans, not for all the immigrants. It doesn’t matter how hard we work, how many sacrifices we make, the American dream is dead for us.
Life in the pandemic (13:20-15:21)
We are in a bad position, the entire world is bad position. On top of everything we have a pandemic affecting us all. This is a historical moment for all of us. In 100 years, when people look at what happened, what we did or what we did not do during this time, it’s going to have huge impact and consequences.
Things developed really quickly. By March I was sick. I don’t know if I got Covid or just the usual…during the winter I get every year. In March, the Health Organization announced that it was pandemic. I was sick and I was leaving work and stay home. I was coughing, I have fever, I was feeling chills, my body ached like crazy. I didn’t sleep in the previous two nights. When I went to the doctor, on the 11th I was already sick for at least three days or more. He said “go home”, he got me a letter. “Don’t go back to work because this is pandemic and it’s serious”. He gave me the medicine they are giving now for coronavirus, I think he was overly cautious. He was really afraid to get close to me. The doctors, they know what a pandemic means. They hear the word, just one word, “okay take action right now”. I stayed home three months solid, I didn’t go out for anything. I didn’t have the equipment to start working because I don’t have internet at home.
New Yorkers, we are very resilient. When it comes to help people ,when things are going bad, it tend to bring out the good in the New Yorkers. I’ve seen many acts of kindness. I think we try to be neighbors.
Education (15:24-16:05)
I’m a big believer in education and I think that what every immigrant women should do is to educate themselves, and to educate their husbands or boyfriends and their children. I think education is paramount to make a decent living and being able to identity all the oppression, racism, discrimination, manipulation by the media and any other source because if you are not educated you can not identify those things, and we can not fight it either.
Closing/Credits
Thank you so much for tuning in to our podcast today. This week’s episode was produced and scripted by Bruna Shapira and Arielle Kandel. Editing is by Anna Zemskova. My name is Daniella Golombeski and I’m thrilled to be your host.
For more information about Real People. Real Lives. and the transcript of this episode, head to nywomenmmigrants.org. Next week, you’ll meet Dorothy, a teacher from Nigeria.
. See you next week!