Mary Fontana is an author, essayist, and award-winning poet whose prose and poems have appeared in The Sun, America, BorderLore, Prairie Schooner, and other publications. Her book Strangers in the Province of Joy: Practicing Radical Hospitality on the US-Mexico Border was released in May by Orbis Books. This narrative history of Annunciation House, a house of hospitality for migrants and refugees in El Paso, Texas, where Mary has volunteered for two decades, draws on her personal experience and extensive interviews to tell the story of migration across the US-Mexico border over the past fifty years.
In addition to her literary output, Mary has a PhD in Immunology & Pathogenesis from the University of California–Berkeley and did infectious disease research for a decade, all the while volunteering part-time with Annunciation House. She lives in Seattle with her husband and two children.
In this episode, Mary shares the history and mission of Annunciation House and its culture rooted in personalism, liberation theology, and “doing small things with great love.” We look at how US immigration policies have changed over time, and how the lack of legal pathways in our current system ultimately endangers migrants’ lives. Mary also explains the importance of “humanizing people and seeing them as worthy of our compassion” and elaborates on the core goal of her book as helping readers “really come to know specific stories of immigrants, migrants, refugees, so that they can feel more of a kinship with them, more of an understanding of why they come.”
See also:
Mary Fontana’s official website
Strangers in the Province of Joy at Orbis Books
“Rio Grande Roulette,” essay at The Lemonwood Quarterly
Awareness by Anthony De Mello, a formative influence on Mary’s spirituality
