Who Belongs?

Some fragmented thoughts on a new book about embracing immigrants, the Guatemalan condiment chirmol, and the aftermath of Evolving Faith 2022

Oct 20, 2022

Thursday, October 20
Grand Rapids, Mich.

Greetings, dear ones.

Today, I have for you the next installment of “Have You Eaten?”—my very occasional Q+A series with interesting people. (If you missed the first one, it was with the Catholic nun and LGBTQ+ activist Jeannine Gramick. Read it here. )

Karen González is a Guatemala-born writer and an immigrant advocate, a former public schoolteacher and a beautiful human. Her first book, The God Who Sees, came out in 2019. This week, she published her second, Beyond Welcome: Centering Immigrants in Our Christian Response to Immigration.

Beyond Welcome is urgent, stirring, and passionate. I wonder, though, whether the subtitle does this valuable book a disservice. While Beyond Welcome is about immigrants and immigration, González looks at things holistically. Weaving together snippets of her own experiences as well as reflections on Scripture, she ranges widely. She takes us into the kitchen and onto the land, explores language and storytelling, tackles racism and patriarchy, and addresses sexuality and economic inequality. In doing so, she reminds that all these aspects of life are intertwined. You can’t talk about immigrants and immigration without wrestling with humanity’s complexity.

My favorite parts of the book are the ones where González wrestles with her own story. She chronicles “spectacular missteps” that she has made and candidly shares lessons she has learned. It’s a hospitable way of inviting the reader to examine their own histories, their own biases, their own ingrained ways of thinking.

Here are some tidied-up excerpts from our recent conversation.

Jeff: Have you eaten?

Karen González: Today? A little bit. But it’s been a busy workday, so not very much. I mostly drank a lot of coffee.

Survival mode.

My plan was to try to make lunch and then the time got away from me. But I did have one of those rice paper-wrapped rolls that have vegetables and shrimp inside them.

In your book, you write about a Guatemalan condiment called chirmol and you have a lovely reflection about one key ingredient, cilantro. Tell me about chirmol and its significance and why you chose to share the story of the cilantro.

Basically it’s a very Guatemalan kind of salsa. It’s always on the table. You can add it to your soups, your caldos, your chicken—anything that you eat. What makes it distinct is that 1) the tomatoes have to be roasted on a dry skillet; we usually do it over a fire. And then 2) you have to add both cilantro and mint. Both of those fresh herbs have to go into it. The real one has to have the spice; often it has those little chilis—the Thai chilis. Almost always. When people serve it and it’s not spicy, people say, This one isn’t the real chirmol.

Originally I wanted to call this book Naturalized, because that’s the name of the petition you use to become a U.S. citizen—it’s a naturalization petition. The other reason is that I read a lovely reflection in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass about what it means to become naturalized—to be a foreigner but to become naturalized to a new environment. Cilantro is in a lot of Guatemalan stews, and I thought it was interesting that it wasn’t native to Guatemala. That got me thinking: You can go live somewhere else. You can plant this herb on another continent; in this case, it originated somewhere in North Africa. And you wake up one day—you don’t know when the change happened—and it’s just part of the landscape. It’s no longer a foreigner. You think of it as yours. I think so many immigrants feel that way. Even though I’ve been in US since I was a little girl, I still get asked where I’m from. I’ve spent almost my whole life here! Often we’re not allowed by the dominant culture to naturalize, even though this is where our lives are, our jobs are, our families are. That’s what got me thinking about cilantro.

I’d love to know what “home” means to you.

Home has to do with family, with a sense of belonging. It has to do with the place where you can be relax and be yourself. That has generally not been a place that’s static. For example, this summer, all of my family, we gathered in Guatemala and we spent the summer there. It felt like home. For me, it’s not as much a place as it is where my people are. But my accent isn’t perfect; I got asked by a lot of Guatemalans where I’m from.

How did that feel?

Like I’m not here or there. When I’m here, I’m not Guatemalan enough. When I’m there, I’m not American enough. I’ve been thinking about how food is a big part of it. My relatives are getting older—my aunts and uncles. My grandparents have passed away. I told my sister: We have to learn to make tamales. We have to ask our tías to teach us, because one day, we’re going to have to be the ones to carry on the tradition. They still do it for us.

You don’t know how to make the tamales yet?

My tías just make them from scratch. They don’t use any recipes. But I have followed a recipe. One time, they turned out okay. Another time, they didn’t. My aunt insists that I was in a bad mood and it got into the food. She said, “You were very frustrated when you called me and I think you just ruined them.” That’s the way they think about food. I can make them, kind of. But I don’t have the touch where I can replicate them and they’re the same every single time. It takes time and practice.

Your parents brought you to the U.S. and built a life here. What did you learn from them about what success meant and what being an American meant?

For my parents, success had a lot to do with us going to good schools, going to college, being professionals. I often tell people that I didn’t really want to be a teacher. I loved English, and I loved literature. But my father was gravely concerned that I was going to graduate and not have a career. So I added a teaching credential. I never really enjoyed being a teacher. It wasn’t a great fit for me. But my family was very happy, because it was a career.

When I left that, that was really hard for my family. They were just afraid. There’s something about immigration in which you’re more likely to take risks in terms of being entrepreneurial. Immigrants know what it’s like to start over. But there’s also a fear of risk at the same time: You know what it’s like to lose everything, including your country and your culture. I think I have that in me—that sense of wanting some stability and security, because that’s been ingrained in me by my family, but also that sense where I want to take risks and do something out of the ordinary.

I feel that. It’s complicated—and as a child of immigrants myself, I’ve felt similar tensions.

You feel you owe them because of how much they sacrificed. They remind you of how much they’ve done for you and what their hopes and dreams for you were. There’s a little bit of guilt, when you feel like you’re not fulfilling their dreams for you.

It’s a different value system from what my friends grew up with.

Once, I was watching this old TV show—Northern Exposure. This mother was reflecting on how one of her sons makes her very happy because he’s an artist and he pursues this bohemian creative life. And her other son is a disappointment because he’s a banker on Wall Street. And I thought, That is not an immigrant mom!

It’s intriguing to me that you chose to move to Kazakhstan and Russia to live and work. That doesn’t fit the template.

That was very controversial in the family! At the time, there was a lot of conflict in Chechnya. The adults were really worried—one, that I would be safe, and two, was this a good idea when it’s more important to be working and saving? That was very hard. But in the end, I think they were like, Well, she’s an adult, we can’t stop her.

I’m curious what that experience, of being in yet another country and immersed in another culture, taught you about belonging and relationship-building. How did it change you?

I realized what it must have been like for my parents to move to the United States in their 30s and not know the culture and not know the language and have to learn to navigate—almost like you’re a child again. I was never once able to go to the post office by myself because I could never really fully understand their system. I thought I knew some things before I left the US, just like my parents knew a few things before they came to the US. But what I knew about Russians was completely wrong; it wasn’t really what they were really like. It gave me a lot of compassion and empathy for my parents and what they went through.

It was also the first time I thought about things like wealth. Our local friends assumed we were all wealthy. And for a long time, I would deny that: I’m just a teacher! But then I realized: I am rich. It was the first time I had to reckon with the stories in the Bible about the rich person. They were about me! I was the rich person. They were talking about how they lived versus how I live in the US. There was real poverty there, and in-your-face corruption. Then I realized, too, how much freedom that blue passport gave me. The only places they could really go were Turkey and the former Soviet Union. I had never questioned before what created these unequal conditions in the world.

One line in your book really struck me, because though our cultural backgrounds and stories are different, there’s a commonality to our families’ experiences: “In my mind my family and I were perpetual guests in the US.” What does being a “perpetual guest” mean to you?

When you’re a guest in someone’s home, you put your best side forward. You bring a gift, you behave properly, you pay attention, and you don’t let everything hang out. You’re not allowed to just be yourself. That’s the way I thought of our life in the US. A lot of that came from my parents. I understood implicitly that we were supposed to be the good kind of immigrant that worked hard and kept their head down and became a success—a credit to the country. For a long time, I never questioned these narratives. I just internalized them. Some of my friends didn’t know my family was undocumented until my first book came out. I never told that story, because if you didn’t come here the “legal” way, you weren’t a good immigrant, a desirable immigrant. Some friends emailed me and said: Why didn’t you share this? I said, “I don’t know. It didn’t come up.” But actually I was very intentional in not sharing it. When you’re a guest, you don’t let it all hang out.

Of course there’s nothing wrong with being the “good” immigrant.

Someone who worked hard and found success and is living the American dream, I don’t have anything against that. My critique is more about people feeling worthy of belonging, with their flaws and all. They shouldn’t have to perform in a certain way in order to be worthy of inclusion and belonging.

Tell me about how you used to understand the concept of the melting pot and how you understand it now.

I taught a class in American culture when I was in Russia and Kazakhstan, and I taught that it was kind of like a fondue pot—everything gets melted together and becomes one thing. I learned that in American history in high school. I thought that was the goal—and that is certainly what my parents wanted for us. They didn’t count the losses that would happen as a result. Their encouragement was to have two lives: our public life was all in English, and at home, you can be Guatemalan. There were whole parts of myself that people didn’t know—even people who were supposedly close to me outside of my family—because I never let them see that side.

Later, I began to question that. I was a college student the first time I read about a salad bowl rather than a melting pot. In a salad bowl, everything gets to be what it is. They retain their own sense and together they make up the salad. I still didn’t know what to do with that, honestly. I didn’t know how it worked. We had some cousins in the US who lived in Latinx neighborhoods and they didn’t speak English well and they didn’t really integrate into the culture well, and my parents were really afraid that would be a road to nowhere. That’s how they described it.

I still meet immigrants all the time who still feel that sense of needing to be two people—one with your family and one outside of that. I think it’s a really difficult goal but it’s worthy: Speak your language. Eat your food. You can do both instead of losing one.

I wonder whether there will always be some losses, though.

There are losses. All my education has been in English, and my ability to express myself in Spanish is limited. It’s pretty good. But I hear my cousins talk with their parents about politics or the economy. I can’t have those conversations with my father, because I don’t have that vocabulary.

And obviously there are still gains.

When I was in Guatemala, I spent time studying Kaqchikel, a Mayan language spoken in central Guatemala. I was talking to my teacher, and I asked, “Do a lot of people—a lot of Guatemalans—come learn?” He said, “No, just people like you, who left the country and came back.” There’s still a lot of discrimination. What I realized was that there are certain things that I’m not afraid to say or do because I left and came back. I told my aunt: All of us have Indigenous blood. There’s no way we don’t. This is where we’re from. We’re from this region.

How did that go over?

It didn’t go over well. Calling someone Indigenous is such an insult there. But one of the gifts of being Guatemalan but also American is that I’m not afraid to embrace that identity. I didn’t grow up with the extent of the animosity that my relatives did. I’m freer to embrace and learn about it without the baggage.

Who is your book written for?

I wrote my first book during the beginning of the Trump administration. I thought, People just don’t have information. They don’t realize the Bible speaks to this. I don’t often say that the Bible is clear about anything, but it is clear about immigration and how you treat the stranger among us. I wanted people to know. I left parts out of my story intentionally because my feeling is that people should care about immigrants because we’re people; we shouldn’t have to lay out all our traumas for people to care.

This book is the book I wanted to write the first time, but I thought it wasn’t palatable enough. I’m not trying to call people to action; I’m trying to call people to be changed. We need to reimagine hospitality. We need to think about the words we use. We need to think about land—and about how what we think about land is harming our neighbors. How do we think about immigration in general? It’s such a common experience yet we think about it as an anomaly.

This isn’t for everyone, though.

This is a book for people who already care. I want them to be challenged and to keep going: Welcome isn’t enough. Move into solidarity and kinship and advocacy. “Welcome” is not the end of the story. This is for people who already welcome and who want to accept the call to be changed so that the world can be a more hospitable place for our neighbors.

What I’m Cooking: After our conversation, I emailed Karen and asked if she might share a recipe for chirmol (note: sometimes it’s also called chismol). She wrote me back the next day to say that she’d had to make it to remember: “Muscle memory!” Here’s the recipe she shared.

5-6 roma tomatoes, ripe
about 1/3 of a white onion, finely chopped
about a tablespoon of fresh cilantro, chopped
about a tablespoon of fresh mint, chopped
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lime juice
1/2 teaspoon minced bird's eye/Thai chilis (I find these at H Mart usually, but in Guatemala we use a chile called chiltepe)
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Char the tomatoes in a dry skillet on medium-high heat until they char to black (you want them charred but not fully cooked). Chop the onions, cilantro, and mint. Chop the tomatoes. Combine in a bowl. Add lime juice, chiles, and salt, and mix. Taste and adjust salt, lime juice, and spice level to your liking. Eat at room temperature.

What makes chirmol chirmol and not pico de gallo is the charring of the tomatoes.

A batch of chirmol in a ceramic bowl edged in blue

On Tuesday, I defrosted and roasted a chicken that I’d brought back from my last visit to the Farminary. Then I made a batch of chirmol, charring the tomatoes like Karen instructed until the smoke detector in the next room squawked in protest. I went out to the yard to get some mint. We also had a couple of chili peppers left from our final harvest before the first frost.

The chirmol was an excellent accompaniment to the chicken—the char on the tomatoes an earthy counterpoint to the brightness of the citrus and the herbs. Then, yesterday morning, I scrambled some eggs and topped them with chirmol. Its flavors had melded and deepened overnight, adding a lovely, gentle spice to our breakfast.

That’s it for this week, folks. I’m still recovering from last weekend’s Evolving Faith gathering. It was a beautiful, challenging time, full of provocative talks and candid testimonies, gorgeous song (the inimitable Spencer LaJoye sang their moving song “Breathing”) and moving poetry (Maggie Smith! Propaganda! Amena Brown!). I didn’t agree with everything the speakers said, but it all made me think—and isn’t that the way it should be?

Sarah Bessey and Jeff Chu onstage at Evolving Faith in Atlanta — I love this pic of Sarah Bessey and me from Day 2 of EF. Credit: Allison Shirreffs

If you were able to join us, I’d love to know what you thought.

Notes of a Make-Believe Farmer

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