OUTsider: Crossing Borders, Breaking Rules, Gaining Pride

Ruth Marimo is an Illegal Immigrant. Born in Zimbabwe, Marimo has traveled the world, gaining insight and deep appreciation for the plight of the illegal immigrant. Sharing firsthand recollections of how her status has been used as a weapon by employers, greedy predators, and even her own husband, she weaves a tale that is both personal and universal. Living as an undocumented immigrant, she details the daily struggles to survive as a health-care worker and to thrive as a wife and mother. Complicating matters, for decades Marimo had denied her true identity as a lesbian woman. OUTsider chronicles the journey of Ruth Marimo, who traveled from Africa to the United States, from abused wife to an out lesbian activist, from a life of fear to one filled with joy. Her trek from the shadows of uncertainty and shame into the bright light of self-acceptance and fulfillment is a story that is richly rewarding and uniquely compelling.

Ruth Marimo was born and raised in the Southern African country of Zimbabwe. In 1999, at the age of nineteen, she moved to the United States. She is now a thirty-five year old, single, lesbian, African mother of two beautiful children, whose lives were flipped upside down when the man she was married to tried to have her deported. It was while she sat in jail, thinking, wondering, praying and awaiting deportation, that she decided to write her life-story.