The Marriage Act: The Risk I Took to Keep My Best Friend in America, and What It Taught Us About Love - Softcover

Monroy, Liza

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1593765363 ISBN 13: 9781593765361

Publisher: Catapult, 2014

Synopsis

After her traditional engagement to her high school sweetheart falls apart, Liza Monroy faced the prospect of another devastating loss: the deportation of her best friend Emir. Desperate to stay in America, Emir tried every legal recourse to obtain a green card knowing that his return to the Middle East—where gay men are often beaten and sometimes killed—was too dangerous. So Liza proposes to Emir in efforts to keep him safe and by her side. After a fast wedding in Las Vegas, the couple faces new adventures and obstacles in both L.A. and New York City as they dodge the INS. Their relationship is compounded further by the fact that Liza’s mother works for the State Department preventing immigration fraud. Through it all, Liza and Emir must contend with professional ambition, adversity, and heartbreak and eventually learn the true lessons of companionship and devotion. This marriage that was not a marriage, in the end, really was.

The Marriage Act is a timely and topical look at the changing face of marriage in America and speaks to the emergent generation forming bonds outside of tradition—and sometimes even outside the law.

About this title

About the Author

Liza Monroy is the author of The Marriage Act: The Risk I Took to Keep My Best Friend in America...And What It Taught Us about Love and Mexican High. Her essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Psychology Today and Poets & Writers. Her work has also been featured in various anthologies, including Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York and One Big Family. Liza has taught writing at Columbia University, UCLA Extension, and UC Santa Cruz. She currently lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Reviews

*Starred Review* Despite its breezy style, Monroy’s provocative memoir offers more emotional food for thought than can possibly be digested in one sitting. After only reading the introduction, one might wish to remain quiet for a few minutes and ponder her use of the phrase gender-neutral marriage. As it applies to what is more commonly referred to as same-sex marriage, the phrase tones down the hot-button image implied by the words same sex. Which, as her experience so powerfully testifies, is arguably the least important element of a contractual agreement between two people who genuinely love one another. It is perhaps the ideal way to perceive of such civil unions, one that encompasses everyone’s right to a legal marriage, regardless of the ability or intention to procreate. As such, this phraseology perfectly embodies Monroy’s intentional marriage to a gay man. The gay man, you see, was in danger of being deported back to a country where he would most certainly have been tortured and killed. So, as his best friend, she proposed a “green card” marriage. Though fraught with one psychological or legal time bomb after another, the marriage worked, despite the unimaginable odds. The book is bright. It’s chatty. But Monroy manages to deliver a hefty emotional wallop. --Donna Chavez

Edition details

• Publisher: Catapult
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1593765363
• ISBN 13: 9781593765361
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304