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empathy
On Charlie Kirk, Public Grieving, and Violence
The country is turning him into a symbol, even as his legacy fuels harm, fear, and loss for families who will never be mourned this loudly.
Sep 12, 2025
I want to be clear: I don’t condone killing of any kind. That’s not who I am, and that’s not what I believe.
This post is also not about advocating for or against gun laws (although we know that the majority of Americans do agree with common-sense laws). This is about societal attention and whose lives are mourned publicly, and how certain narratives and policies shape who we grieve and why.
I am struck by how many people on my feed are publicly grieving Charlie Kirk. It feels dissonant. Let me explain why.
None of these same people posted about Minnesota House Member, Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman, and her husband being murdered in their sleep. Nor did they post about Speaker John Hoffman and his wife being shot in their sleep by the same shooter (they did survive).
None posted about the 48 school shootings that have occurred already in 2025, leaving 19 dead and 81 injured (including one just hours after Kirk was shot, where two more children are critically injured, and at least four more injured in the Colorado school shooting).
None posted about the 50,000+ Palestinian children killed or injured in what can only be described as genocide.
None posted about the 688 women in the US who died in childbirth in 2024, or the 49,000 who almost did. Primarily women of color of course.
None posted about the 14 people who have died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody so far this year.
I could go on and on with these examples.
He spent his career normalizing deadly ideas (from gun culture to dehumanization), and in the end, he was consumed by the same violence he helped spread.
Here’s the dissonance: Charlie Kirk actively contributed to the narratives and policies that fueled this violence. He supported policies that tore children from their parents’ arms, while claiming to be a family man. He spread racist, homophobic, transphobic, antisemitic, and Islamophobic ideology while claiming to be a Christian. He near shouted misogynistic ideals while being married to a woman. Through Turning Point USA, he built a media machine that thrived on outrage, disinformation, and deepening division.
He once said, “I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that—it does a lot of damage.” If you don’t believe in empathy, it makes it much easier to oppress others and create division. It makes it much easier to push a narrative without regard for the consequences of that narrative.
He spent his career normalizing deadly ideas (from gun culture to dehumanization), and in the end, he was consumed by the same violence he helped spread.
Charlie Kirk didn’t physically commit violence himself, though he profited from fear, division, and policies that harmed and continue to harm marginalized people, thus perpetuating the violence. His influence amplified oppression, and that influence brought him financial gain, visibility, and political power.
It is, of course, deeply sad for his children. No child should have to lose a parent like this.
That being said, the way his death is being framed publicly goes beyond grief. It edges into martyrdom. This is turning him into a symbol, even as his legacy fuels harm, fear, and loss for families who will never be mourned this loudly.
We should grieve children, families, and communities first. Not the people who profited from their suffering.
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How Immigrant Fiction Can Reshape American Realities
As the politicos do their darndest to render the Statue of Liberty little more than a New York City tourist trinket, what can American immigrant literary fiction offer our nation in terms of imagining a more welcoming, inclusive, and promising future?
Aug 20, 2025
Immigrants have been reshaping America since the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. Or perhaps earlier than that fateful day in 1620, if you count Viking excursions dating back to 1021 and Spaniards landing in Florida in 1513. After the subjugation and genocide of the continent’s Indigenous people, and the establishment of the United States, wave after wave of newcomers from all over the globe, forced and unforced, have helped build what so many call “a nation of immigrants.”
Despite those facts, immigration has always been a topic of debate and a lightning rod for racism, xenophobia, and nationalism, a tool of political manipulation that appeals to people’s worst instincts and fears. Since the political rise of Donald Trump and his descent down that golden escalator in 2015, the debate on immigration and the US-Mexico border has shifted considerably to the right, after decades of centering on moderate concepts calling for comprehensive immigration reform and enhanced border security.
In the 2024 election cycle, both parties have skewed further in the same direction, narrowing the debate and placing immigrants and their advocates in an ever-tightening corner, with Republicans calling for mass deportations and Democrats supporting limits to asylum for refugees and backing away from providing public services (such as health and education) to undocumented immigrants and their children.
As the politicos do their darndest to render the Statue of Liberty little more than a New York City tourist trinket, what can American immigrant literary fiction offer our nation in terms of imagining a more welcoming, inclusive, and promising future?
Humanity, New Visions, and Hope
We are all human beings. To me, that’s what any good book reminds us of at its core. Authentic immigrant stories chronicle the desperation, urgency, and desire for safety and progress that drive immigrants to America’s shores in the first place. Immigrant and multicultural literature explore the process of becoming American, the rifts between immigrant generations and those born and raised here, and the sacrifices and rewards experienced by families and communities through acculturation, assimilation, and simply the act of living in a country full of promise yet also torn apart by a legacy of racism and discrimination. But, no matter where the readers and the writers come from, when one walks in the shoes of another, one gains empathy. In this way, immigrant literature builds bridges that foster unity in our shared humanity and multigenerational American experience.
Before embarking on my own journey as a writer of literary fiction steeped in the immigrant experience, some of the books that most deeply touched me were likewise immigrant or multicultural narratives. Even though they may not have been specifically about the Latino perspective, I saw myself and my family reflected in their characters’ struggles and dreams. At an early age, that experience as a reader opened my mind to cultures other than my own.
I did not get to New York City until I was a college student in New England, but I felt like I’d been there as a child making Jewish friends in the tenements of Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep. I never spent a night in Harlem, but I could feel the dust on the floorboards and the tension between father and son in James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain. I’d never seen a ghost, but I saw myself and began to recognize my own voice as a writer in Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.
When we recognize our genuine shared God-given humanity, the man-made machinations of maps fall into the shadows and the hope of who we could be and what we could do if we embrace each other lights the way in a blaze of glory.
When we see each other as more the same than “other” and “different,” we see that artificial constructs—such as borders and citizenship and legal documents providing permission for human beings to live in peace on various patches of the Earth’s soil drawn on maps by men who waged and won wars decades or centuries past—are just that: artificial, man-made, and by their very nature should be malleable. To connect and lift each other up, we must work toward more togetherness and less division.
Immigrant fiction is a laboratory for the creation of new visions for where we could go as a nation, as a continent, as a people united rather than divided. Just like science fiction has laid out blueprints for many of the high-tech devices and inventions that are now either fixtures in our daily lives or soon to revolutionize the way we live, immigrant fiction can help us imagine, envision, and thus create a new reality.
In my novel, The Resurrection of Fulgencio Ramirez, I imagine a world where a multigenerational utopia is built on a city that straddles both sides of the Rio Grande, a place where not just the borders between nations fade away but also those between life and death. In a manuscript I’m currently working on, I envision an America where someday there will be no borders at all. The walls and fences will be pulled down. The coils of razor wire will be retired. The militarized forces will be deployed elsewhere, far from the fertile farmlands of the Rio Grande Valley, far from the vast and perilous Chihuahuan Desert. The river will gleam with promise and flow in tranquility as it snakes its way like a shimmering serpent toward the Gulf of Mexico. Bridges will be built. And people will move safely back and forth, north and south, along with trade and commerce. When this happens, cultural harmony will rise, economies will boom, and illegal narcotics, weapons, and human trafficking will become ancient history.
Imagine that. Instead of masses huddled along fences and politicians saber rattling and fearmongering, countries will work together to solve the hemispheric problems that they cannot solve alone. Stronger than ever, fueled by access to opportunity and more affordable labor, the combined Americas will be able to compete with the surging global powerhouses of China and India.
For that to happen, we must stop seeing the border as a problem and seize it as an opportunity. We need stories that inspire hope in us, faith that we can see past each other’s differences and find the common ground that binds us together: a love of family and freedom; a desire for each generation to do better than the one that came before; a respect for our fellow human beings regardless of where they were born, the color of their skin, or the language their mother whispered into their ears as newborn babies cradled in their arms.
We all have hearts that ache for love, minds that crave understanding, souls that yearn to be seen. This human connection—cognizant of the pain we all bear as living, bleeding beings but fiercely determined to cling to an optimistic view of the future we can share—drives the narrative arc of my new novel, The Border Between Us. It is the story of an immigrant family, of a young American raised on the border and kept afloat by the love of family and irrepressible buoyancy of the American dream. And many people who have read it have told me how they were touched by it in varied ways.
People didn’t focus so much on the border or the immigrant aspects when they shared their reactions. They mention seeing their own lives reflected in the novel: the strains of complex parent-child relationships, the balancing act between pursuing one’s own aspirations while living up to family responsibilities and obligations, the grief and hardship of losing loved ones before their time. When we recognize our genuine shared God-given humanity, the man-made machinations of maps fall into the shadows and the hope of who we could be and what we could do if we embrace each other lights the way in a blaze of glory.
Listen to me, America. I’m from the border, born and raised. I love the border. And, I believe the borders should be erased. Anyone supporting the proposed mass deportations (as well as the racial and ethnic profiling and vast detentions these would entail) should read Farewell to Manzanar, chronicling the mistreatment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. They should also do some research on the inhumane Operation Wetback, through which over 1 million Mexican migrant workers were deported in the 1950s. These are cautionary tales from our not-so-distant past.
We can be more than we are today as a nation and as a people. For that to happen, we must avoid the errors of the past, stop limiting ourselves, and expand our horizons. Until then, pick up some immigrant or multicultural fiction, learn from history, and imagine the possibilities. Someday, we can turn honest memories and empathetic visions into a new and more welcoming reality.
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We Need Human Connection to Heal Democracy and Build Shared Prosperity
If we want to have an economic system that looks out for everyone—a system of belonging and inclusion—we must improve how we relate to each other.
Jul 20, 2025
Recently I wrote about shared prosperity and why I believe that focusing on achieving it is a better way to organize our economy. The message resonated with many people, who wanted to learn more. Over the coming months I plan to explore the concept of shared prosperity and how it can guide our economic system as an invitation to investigate, discuss, debate, and imagine a better way to organize our economy. My hope is that these pieces might help you find a way to describe something you have been thinking, give you an idea to develop further in your work, or—best of all—give you a little hope to keep fighting the good fight.
We are in a critical moment in our history. The world economic order underpinned by neoliberalism is sputtering and collapsing before our eyes. It is collapsing under the weight of extreme inequality, the gross concentration of power and wealth hoarded by a few, the unsustainable exploitation of our planet and our labor, and the devastating human suffering required to maintain the status quo. What comes next is up to us. Although shaping the future may seem beyond our control, we have the power to demand a better economic design.
In this context, I have been reflecting on the importance of connection, relationships, and partnership, and their significance for our overall well-being and success. Our current economic system and culture are hyper-individualized and polarized. This is not a coincidence. It is by design.
We live in a time when people yearn for real connection and a sense of belonging. We know that we are living through a loneliness epidemic that was amplified by a worldwide pandemic, when our unit of connection was reduced to the people confined to our homes. Our sense of connection has been further tested by compounding crises, such as armed conflicts and climate change. Technology, which is supposed to connect us and make life easier, often increases loneliness, division, and isolation. Charlatans exploit our divisions to further their agendas of greed and hate. These conditions have created a world that feels less connected, more skeptical, and more cynical—a world where it is easier to “other” our neighbors than to meet them where they are.
The people barring us from the future we deserve will leverage all their power and resources to keep us from realizing that what binds us is far greater than what divides us.
My earliest memories living in the United States are of feeling othered. When I arrived in Los Angeles, my family home was the only place I felt secure and able to be myself. Those early days as an immigrant living in Los Angeles were difficult until I met Thomas. He was my neighbor, a Black kid my age who was always playing in the street. Despite not speaking the same language, Thomas and I became good friends. Soon, I too was playing in the street most of the day. Eventually our families started spending time together, sharing food, laughs, history, and responsibility for each other. Whether Thomas knew it or not, he enabled me to feel safe and comfortable in a foreign setting and I happily accepted his invitation to build friendship and community. The connection that my family developed with Thomas’ family was crucial to my success in the United States because I felt that other people in my community had my back.
I again experienced the power of connection when my family returned to Mexico City when I was 8. I felt like a foreigner in my own birthplace. I had a hard time relating to the culture: I spoke differently, I dressed differently, I again felt like I didn’t belong. Fortunately, I was quickly introduced to many cousins that lived in the neighborhood, who welcomed me into a thriving, connected community. We played in the street under the watchful eye of abuelas, merchants, and street vendors who knew us and our families. These relationships were fountains of information about neighborhood, city, and worldwide events. I remember experiencing major events—like Pope John Paul II’s visit, a solar eclipse in 1991, and the signing of the North America Free Trade Agreement—with this community. The neighborhood helped me to understand these events and simultaneously ease my fears and anxieties.
What do these experiences have to do with shared economic prosperity? I believe they illustrate themes fundamental to achieving it: connection, reciprocity, solidarity, mutuality, curiosity, empathy, openness, service, and love. We are taught that our economy is shaped by rules, practices, and systems that determine how goods and services are produced, sold, and bought. I believe our economy is shaped by how we relate to each other, what we value, and what we protect. If we want to have an economic system that looks out for everyone—a system of belonging and inclusion—we must improve how we relate to each other.
Improving our relationships, building community, cultivating belonging and mutual dependence; it is all key to achieving shared economic prosperity. It may seem daunting to overcome our current division and polarization, but it is not impossible. It starts with something seemingly simple but hard to practice genuinely: listening and embracing the opportunity to learn from people different from you.
I know I struggle letting my guard down, consistently wondering if new people I engage with align with my values and worldviews. I am most willing to listen, understand, and learn from different perspectives from the people I care about. But how different would our world be if we were capable of extending this type of human connection to the people beyond our inner circles?
I am not naive enough to think that everyone is interested in building a mutually beneficial relationship with me. I am not blind to the hate and indifference that some hold for their fellow humans. But I have to believe that most of us want similar life outcomes even if we talk about them or work toward them in different ways. I believe we all want a good life, the opportunity to provide for our family, meaningful purpose, the ability to leave this world better than we received it.
We won’t achieve those goals if we remain divided; it simply won’t happen. The people barring us from the future we deserve will leverage all their power and resources to keep us from realizing that what binds us is far greater than what divides us. They will do so because they know that if we were to find a way to overcome our differences, it will mean an end to their ability to hoard the abundance of this world. But we have the power to heal our democracy, to bridge our divides, and to build shared prosperity. It starts with improving our human connections.
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