Wheel of (Immigration) Fortune: A Writer’s Satirical Take of His Journey From Colombia to The Late Show
Felipe Torres Medina with his book "America, Let Me In: A Choose Your Immigration Story" during a signing event in New York. Photo by JT Anderson/courtesy of Felipe Torres Medina
a new book hilariously — and heartbreakingly — navigates the labyrinth of U.S. immigration.
From growing up in Colombia to writing for CBS’ “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” in New York City, Felipe Torres Medina’s trajectory has been full of twists and turns. So it makes perfect sense that he views his journey to the US – and those of countless fellow immigrants – as akin to a “Choose Your Own Adventure” story. Now he’s written a book about the innumerable variables and outcomes of such journeys – “America, Let Me In: A Choose Your Immigration Story,” which is published by Abrams Image.
“I wanted to write a humor book first,” Torres Medina tells palabra. “A humor book that happens to be about immigration, not an immigration book that happens to be funny. That was my goal.”
In writing the book, he says, “I thought about being able to tell more than one story – not only in my immigrant journey, but considering different kinds of visas, different ways to remain in the U.S.”
Humor sparkles throughout the pages. The author pokes fun at wealthy (and fictional) French men and women who have a relatively easy path to entering the U.S., thanks to wealth, entrepreneurship, or some combination of both. At an April 10 book talk in suburban Boston, Torres Medina left the attendees laughing – and thinking more about the immigrant experience at a time when it’s on many people’s minds.
The cover of Felipe Torres Medina's book "America, Let Me In: A Choose Your Immigration Story." Image courtesy of Felipe Torres Medina
The book was released amid increased challenges for immigrants from the Trump administration, such as stepped-up Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on undocumented migrants, with Boston among the cities targeted.
Torres Medina told the gathering at the book signing that humor is “the only way we sometimes deal with the horror.” And, he added, “you just have to keep living your life. Latino communities, Latino people, have to stay alive to fight … Jokes help us stay alive.”
With cameos from Babar the Elephant and a centaur queen, plus digs at Boston, the humor of the book is blended with compassion for the real-life individuals and families who must navigate the U.S. immigration system. Early on, the reader finds four options for immigrating to the United States: easy, medium, hard, and very hard. Those who pick “easy” will be disappointed.
Torres Medina read aloud what readers would see if they chose this option: “Incorrect! There is no easy way to move to America. Your journey has ended before it began!”
“That’s a ‘funny-because-it’s-true’ kind of joke,” he reflects to palabra. “There’s no easy way to move to the U.S. I wanted to make that very clear.”
Felipe Torres Medina at a book talk and signing event in New York. Photo by JT Anderson/courtesy of Felipe Torres Medina
Torres Medina knows this from experience. Much of the book details his own immigrant journey, which familiarized him with the mind-boggling array of ways to enter the country and their respective requirements. He first came as a student at Boston University, but when his graduate program ended, so did his F-1 student visa. He scrambled to find a way to stay, and in the process learned about options for creative types such as himself, including the O-1B visa that admitted Torres Medina as an “Alien of Extraordinary Ability in the Arts.” As the book details, this did not happen without some initial pitfalls.
Throughout the pages, he shows empathy for fellow Latino immigrants. As he notes, they often face additional challenges from American officials who do not understand certain cultural norms. One such norm is the practice of parents giving a child four names: first, middle, father’s last name and mother’s last name. This has led to the author being mistaken for similarly named individuals, some with criminal backgrounds, while attempting to enter the U.S.
“For a person who writes comedy, the only way to deal with this is to write comedy about it,” he tells palabra. “It’s the only way to deal with things you have absolutely no control over, that you cannot change.”
Felipe Torres Medina with an attendee at a book signing event in Kansas City. Photo by Maisie VanSlander/courtesy of Felipe Torres Medina
There were some aspects of the immigrant journey that the author couldn’t joke about. Remember the section where readers could choose the level of difficulty for their immigration journey? Well, for anyone who chooses “very hard,” their path will end as abruptly as the “easy” one. Why? Because Torres Medina does not want to be seen as making light of the arduous journey of impoverished migrants risking their lives.
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“A lot of people come here the very, very hard way,” he says, including “thousands and thousands of migrants” from Colombia or Venezuela. Unlike his own journey by plane, these migrants make an arduous overland trek through the Darién Gap, a 60-mile stretch of roadless, dense jungle rainforest and mountains located on the border between Panama and Colombia, the only land bridge between North and South America.
“The most treacherous path of land in their path to the U.S. from South America is in Colombia,” Torres Medina says. “It’s an issue I know a lot about. I want to treat it with respect.”
Ultimately, things worked out well for Torres Medina. Not only did he get to stay in the United States, he wound up falling in love with his future wife, Taylor, a fellow comedy writer who is with HBO’s “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.”
“I think it was nice to be able to look at it from the rearview mirror,” Torres Medina says of his immigrant journey. “At the same time, any immigrant will tell you the journey never feels quite over.”
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Rich Tenorio is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in a variety of media outlets. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Tenorio is also a cartoonist. @rbtenorio
Patricia Guadalupe, raised in Puerto Rico, is a bilingual multimedia journalist based in Washington, D.C., and is the interim managing editor of palabra. She has been covering the capital for both English- and Spanish-language media outlets since the mid-1990s and previously worked as a reporter in New York City. She’s been an editor at Hispanic Link News Service, a reporter at WTOP Radio (CBS Washington affiliate), a contributing reporter for CBS Radio network, and has written for NBC News.com and Latino Magazine, among others. She is a graduate of Michigan State University and has a Master’s degree from the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University. She is the former president of the Washington, D.C., chapter of NAHJ and is an adjunct professor at American University in the nation’s capital and the Washington semester program of Florida International University. @PatriciagDC