From the Bookshelves: Love Across Borders: Passports, Papers, and Romance in a Divided World by Anna Lekas Miller (forthcoming June 6, 2023)
Love Across Borders: Passports, Papers, and Romance in a Divided World (Algonquin Books; forthcoming June 6, 2023) by Anna Lekas Miller illustrates the journeys of couples around the world who must navigate the ever-changing immigration laws and ambiguous systems to be together—as she did to be with her husband.
Love Across Borders is the story of how Lekas Miller and her partner, Salem, fought to stay together, but it’s also the stories of many others, woven together through each other’s shared frustration over borders, and their desire to love despite them. It takes readers through contentious frontiers around the world, from Turkey to Iraq, Syria to Greece, Mexico to the United States, to reveal the laws intent on dividing us. Lekas Miller carefully details the endless hurdles that she and Salem, who is Syrian, had to face while in Istanbul, when they were both reporting on the Syrian civil war. When Turkey started cracking down on refugees, Salem wasn’t allowed to stay, nor could he safely return to Syria. While his mobility was severely limited, Lekas Miller’s American passport left her with various possibilities, though she knew her home was now wherever Salem could reside safely.
As they navigated his asylum claims, the United States’ Muslim ban, and labyrinthine regulations in several different countries, Lekas Miller learned about—and naturally bonded with—other people whose spouses had been deported, who found love in refugee camps, whose differing immigration statuses caused complicated power dynamics and financial hardship in their relationships or threatened the wellbeing of their children. From Wala’a who took a notoriously dangerous boat trip from the Turkish coast to Greece to meet and later marry the love of her life, Ahmed, to Cecilia, who has borne the burden of singlehandedly supporting her family and loved her husband from afar ever since he was deported to Mexico nine years ago, Lekas Miller beautifully provides us with snapshots into the myriad ways that borders shape our lives and impact our ability to be with the people we love.
“I set out to write this book to chronicle the stories of people who love one another despite borders. It is the story of Syrian lovers who fell for each other despite being separated by the Mediterranean Sea, and of a Honduran queer couple who fled street gangs and death threats to be together, only to be separated by ICE agents once they crossed into the US.” Lekas Millers says. “This book is a journey into the hearts of people fighting an unjust system to be together. Writing it helped me make sense of the way that borders shaped my own relationship and build a community of people fighting for the right to love and be loved.” Love Across Borders offers a fascinating look at the history of passports (a shockingly recent institution) and the discriminatory laws shaping how people move through the world every day, all while delving into these rich love stories across the world.
KJ