Latest news with #TheWonderfulWizardofOz
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
I Was Undocumented for 21 Years. This Is Why I Tell My Story
Credit - Getty Images For 21 years, I was undocumented. While I am an American citizen now, this fact still remains the boldest and most dangerous thing I can say out loud. The danger of being undocumented, of course—greatly heightened by President Donald Trump's administration—is of deportation. When my family entered this country, my parents warned me of the possible consequences. 'If you tell anyone you're illegal, they'll report you to Homeland Security,' they'd say. I was four years old. There's an existential power that deportation holds over the undocumented community. It is another form of death, never to see your loved ones again from home. That's how it felt for me—too young to remember my birth country of Brazil. It's no wonder The Wonderful Wizard of Oz transfixed me as the first book in English I stayed up late to read; it made an image of what deportation might be like: a sudden and violent transport to an unknown realm (or so I'd been told about Brazil, compared to Queens, N.Y., since I could barely remember it when parents came to America) where one's only mission is to return home. Though I claimed no citizenship in the U.S. at the time, I found citizenship in literature. Literature is an easy place to make a home, and my schoolteachers and librarians invited me out of Oz and onto the American prairie, the English drawing room, and to poetry. They directed me toward Homer, Emily Dickinson, and Audre Lorde. They assigned writing, too; for poetry is never solely to be read. They showed me that part of literature's generosity is that one may try a hand in creating it, in joining the great conversation that crisscrosses generations, cultures, languages, and people—the glorious and the meek. As I became a poet, literature—and the power of the language—continued to be my most stable home. Read More: Inside Donald Trump's Mass-Deportation Operation Growing up, I wanted to be like Jack Gilbert, Elizabeth Bishop, even Adrienne Rich, poets who I imagined bore traits I perceived as quintessentially American: so cheerful, I thought, in their privileges that they had to conjure their artistic melancholy. So, at the writing table, I pretended my fears were not mine, but of a stranger; and that I was a typical Asian American, whose problems were 'merely' bigotry and, say, filial piety. Problems that I too confronted but felt safer to discuss on the page than my status. Generations of immigrant writers had demonstrated how one writes on such troubles, and it would be expected of me, since I look like an Asian American. Instead of writing about my whole undocumented self, I pretended I was an actor of heroines, like Joan Chen and Gong Li. Someone who surely had no legal problems to obscure from my classmates. But dishonesty of this nature does not yield good art—at least, not truthful art. And my poems were skittish, little creatures. Like blindfolded sheep, they bumped around the fields of my page, grazing, stumbling, and ultimately beset by the wolves that were my bewildered classmates, who were keen enough readers to notice that these poems weren't quite working, but without the context to understand why. And how could they? A lifetime of pretending I was just another American meant that when I tried to speak honestly, I couldn't actually do it. Ostensibly, I had much to write about. I could've written about how my father had designed hydroelectric dams in Brazil and then labored at a laundromat in New York City. Or how both my parents survived civil war and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Or how, in the U.S., my mother sought refuge in Dami Mission, a doomsday cult that prophesied a mass rapture to heaven. But these were all unavailable to me; I couldn't write about any of it. I first needed to feel secure to tell my story. Perhaps it is surprising to learn that even as a naturalized citizen, I remain wary to this day. My green card arrived when I was 27. Yet I did not travel abroad for another seven years, and that was to Canada. The outside world had become forbidden fruit—and an object of dread. My writing, however, was impatient to change. The year I received my green card, Irish poet and professor Eamon Grennan counseled me. He said: 'Esther, lay bare the narrative field.' What he meant was, tell the story. Tell my story. Slowly, I did. My first decent poems imagined parts of my mother's life. What I guessed about her feelings. I wrote about being her daughter. I described my father's voyage from Hong Kong to Brazil by way of Africa. I wrote about Queens. Eventually, I wrote about my own experience of being undocumented. I followed Grennan's advice: I laid bare the narrative field. My first book, titled Cold Thief Place, reads like a memoir in poems. A memoir was not necessarily my intention, but the book does tell the stories of how my mother frog-leaped from marriage to marriage to defect from China. Of how I muddled through my own marriage, which made me eligible to apply for a green card. Of how two signs, 'European only' and 'Black only,' at a post office in South Africa baffled my father. Telling stories allowed for another discovery: just as I fell in love with the raw, fickleness of the English sentence, its straightforward subject-predicate structure began to enchant me, too. I like a brutally direct poem, with unembroidered language and simple, but elegant, syntax. Such a structure means I cannot hide or delay the revelation of things that are painful but true. I laugh when one of my poems emerges especially dark. It's dark because I was truthful. Sometimes, there is no solace. Unlike African American poets, we undocumented poets do not hold centuries of literary tradition, with great names like Phillis Wheatley, Lawrence Dunbar, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Among the general population, we cannot identify who is undocumented or a citizen—it is taboo to ask casually what an immigrant's visa status is, or it should be taboo to ask about such private, life-determining matters. Like the LGBTQIA+ community, we undocumented may or may not be 'out' about our status. Happily, though, there is a 'we.' In 2015, three poets formed the Undocupoets, an organization that I now co-run, with two other formerly undocumented poets, Janine Joseph and Marcelo Hernandez Castillo. Our organization awards three $500 fellowships each year to other undocumented poets and raises awareness within and without the literary world. As of this writing, Janine has published two books of poems, most recently Decade of the Brain, and Marcelo has published a book of poems and a memoir, titled Children of the Land. My first book, titled Cold Thief Place, came out in March. So this is a young tradition. Our other work is ensuring that undocumented people and citizens know of this tradition. We don't wish to pass as simply American, as if we do not hold a uniquely American story. Rather, we wish to help archive undocumented art, because we are a fundamental part of this country's history. And we wish to let undocumented writers know that they too are part of a we (if they wish); and that our community is larger than we think. We are vocal; we are present. Contact us at letters@
Time Magazine
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
I Was Undocumented for 21 Years. This Is Why I Tell My Story
For 21 years, I was undocumented. While I am an American citizen now, this fact still remains the boldest and most dangerous thing I can say out loud. The danger of being undocumented, of course—greatly heightened by President Donald Trump's administration —is of deportation. When my family entered this country, my parents warned me of the possible consequences. 'If you tell anyone you're illegal, they'll report you to Homeland Security,' they'd say. I was four years old. There's an existential power that deportation holds over the undocumented community. It is another form of death, never to see your loved ones again from home. That's how it felt for me—too young to remember my birth country of Brazil. It's no wonder The Wonderful Wizard of Oz transfixed me as the first book in English I stayed up late to read; it made an image of what deportation might be like: a sudden and violent transport to an unknown realm (or so I'd been told about Brazil, compared to Queens, N.Y., since I could barely remember it when parents came to America) where one's only mission is to return home. Though I claimed no citizenship in the U.S. at the time, I found citizenship in literature. Literature is an easy place to make a home, and my schoolteachers and librarians invited me out of Oz and onto the American prairie, the English drawing room, and to poetry. They directed me toward Homer, Emily Dickinson, and Audre Lorde. They assigned writing, too; for poetry is never solely to be read. They showed me that part of literature's generosity is that one may try a hand in creating it, in joining the great conversation that crisscrosses generations, cultures, languages, and people—the glorious and the meek. As I became a poet, literature—and the power of the language—continued to be my most stable home. Growing up, I wanted to be like Jack Gilbert, Elizabeth Bishop, even Adrienne Rich, poets who I imagined bore traits I perceived as quintessentially American: so cheerful, I thought, in their privileges that they had to conjure their artistic melancholy. So, at the writing table, I pretended my fears were not mine, but of a stranger; and that I was a typical Asian American, whose problems were 'merely' bigotry and, say, filial piety. Problems that I too confronted but felt safer to discuss on the page than my status. Generations of immigrant writers had demonstrated how one writes on such troubles, and it would be expected of me, since I look like an Asian American. Instead of writing about my whole undocumented self, I pretended I was an actor of heroines, like Joan Chen and Gong Li. Someone who surely had no legal problems to obscure from my classmates. But dishonesty of this nature does not yield good art—at least, not truthful art. And my poems were skittish, little creatures. Like blindfolded sheep, they bumped around the fields of my page, grazing, stumbling, and ultimately beset by the wolves that were my bewildered classmates, who were keen enough readers to notice that these poems weren't quite working, but without the context to understand why. And how could they? A lifetime of pretending I was just another American meant that when I tried to speak honestly, I couldn't actually do it. Ostensibly, I had much to write about. I could've written about how my father had designed hydroelectric dams in Brazil and then labored at a laundromat in New York City. Or how both my parents survived civil war and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Or how, in the U.S., my mother sought refuge in Dami Mission, a doomsday cult that prophesied a mass rapture to heaven. But these were all unavailable to me; I couldn't write about any of it. I first needed to feel secure to tell my story. Perhaps it is surprising to learn that even as a naturalized citizen, I remain wary to this day. My green card arrived when I was 27. Yet I did not travel abroad for another seven years, and that was to Canada. The outside world had become forbidden fruit—and an object of dread. My writing, however, was impatient to change. The year I received my green card, Irish poet and professor Eamon Grennan counseled me. He said: 'Esther, lay bare the narrative field.' What he meant was, tell the story. Tell my story. Slowly, I did. My first decent poems imagined parts of my mother's life. What I guessed about her feelings. I wrote about being her daughter. I described my father's voyage from Hong Kong to Brazil by way of Africa. I wrote about Queens. Eventually, I wrote about my own experience of being undocumented. I followed Grennan's advice: I laid bare the narrative field. My first book, titled Cold Thief Place, reads like a memoir in poems. A memoir was not necessarily my intention, but the book does tell the stories of how my mother frog-leaped from marriage to marriage to defect from China. Of how I muddled through my own marriage, which made me eligible to apply for a green card. Of how two signs, 'European only' and 'Black only,' at a post office in South Africa baffled my father. Telling stories allowed for another discovery: just as I fell in love with the raw, fickleness of the English sentence, its straightforward subject-predicate structure began to enchant me, too. I like a brutally direct poem, with unembroidered language and simple, but elegant, syntax. Such a structure means I cannot hide or delay the revelation of things that are painful but true. I laugh when one of my poems emerges especially dark. It's dark because I was truthful. Sometimes, there is no solace. Unlike African American poets, we undocumented poets do not hold centuries of literary tradition, with great names like Phillis Wheatley, Lawrence Dunbar, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Among the general population, we cannot identify who is undocumented or a citizen—it is taboo to ask casually what an immigrant's visa status is, or it should be taboo to ask about such private, life-determining matters. Like the LGBTQIA+ community, we undocumented may or may not be 'out' about our status. Happily, though, there is a 'we.' In 2015, three poets formed the Undocupoets, an organization that I now co-run, with two other formerly undocumented poets, Janine Joseph and Marcelo Hernandez Castillo. Our organization awards three $500 fellowships each year to other undocumented poets and raises awareness within and without the literary world. As of this writing, Janine has published two books of poems, most recently Decade of the Brain, and Marcelo has published a book of poems and a memoir, titled Children of the Land. My first book, titled Cold Thief Place, came out in March. So this is a young tradition. Our other work is ensuring that undocumented people and citizens know of this tradition. We don't wish to pass as simply American, as if we do not hold a uniquely American story. Rather, we wish to help archive undocumented art, because we are a fundamental part of this country's history. And we wish to let undocumented writers know that they too are part of a we (if they wish); and that our community is larger than we think. We are vocal; we are present.
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Wicked: For Good Trailer Sees Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo Return to Oz
Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo return to Oz in the first trailer for . Wicked: For Good is the forthcoming sequel to 2024's Wicked. Releasing in United States theaters this coming November, the movie sees Grande reprise her role as Glinda and Erivo return as Elphaba. Check out the Wicked: For Good trailer below (watch more trailers and clips): Following the events of the first Wicked movie, the Wicked: For Good trailer sees Glinda and Elphaba on opposing sides as Oz has now decided they hate the Wicked Witch of the West. This puts Glinda in an awkward position as she's now becoming more involved with Oz's politics while also having allegiance to her friend. Along with Grande and Erivo, the cast of Wicked: For Good includes Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero Tigelaar, Ethan Slater as Boq Woodsman, Marissa Bode as Nessarose Thropp, Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible, Jeff Goldblum as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and Bowen Yang as Pfannee. Wicked: For Good adapts the second act of the popular 2003 stage musical by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman. The musical, itself, is a loose adaptation of Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which in turn is based on L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz book, which was adapted into the infamous 1939 movie with Judy Garland. Jon M. Chu returns to direct Wicked: For Good. Prior to working on the Wicked movies, Chu made 2008's Step Up 2: The Streets, 2010's Step Up 3D, 2013's G.I. Joe: Retaliation, 2015's Jem and the Holograms, 2016's Now You See Me 2, 2018's Crazy Rich Asians, and 2021's In the Heights. Wicked: For Good will be released in United States theaters on November 21, 2025, from Universal Pictures. Wicked, meanwhile, is currently available to stream on Peacock. The post Wicked: For Good Trailer Sees Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo Return to Oz appeared first on - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More.
Time of India
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Wicked: For Good movie, sequel to Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo's musical hit, trailer out; check release date
The trailer of Wicked: For Good , the new instalment of the Wicked franchise has been released. The sequel to the 2024 super hit musical starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo comes a year after Wicked took the global box office by surprise. The movie is set to be released in cinemas on November 21, 2025. Both films narrate the origin stories of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, played by Erivo, and Glinda the Good, played by Grande, from The Wizard of Oz, according to the news website WHO. Wicked: For Good is based on the second act of the 2003 stage musical Wicked. The musical hit was an adaptation of Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel which carried the same name. It was in turn based on the story first told in L Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, adapted into the 1939 film starring Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 5 Books Warren Buffett Wants You to Read In 2025 Blinkist: Warren Buffett's Reading List Undo In the trailer of Wicked: For Good, Elphaba can be seen in hiding for opposing the Wizard's regime. She also teases the arrival of Dorothy, who kills Elphaba with a bucket of water in The Wizard of Oz. However, the name of the actor who will play Dorothy has not been revealed yet. Impossible to make Wicked into one movie: Director Jon M Chu Director of the movie, Jon M Chu , has said that it was 'impossible' to make Wicked into one film 'without doing some real damage to it,' The Guardian reported. Both films were cut simultaneously during the editing process before the first film was released in 2024 Live Events Chu said that the decisions to try and cut songs or trim characters started to feel like fatal compromises to the source material that entertained people for so many years. 'We decided to give ourselves a bigger canvas and make not just one Wicked movie but two,' he said, according to The Guardian. Wicked grossed US$755m worldwide on a US$150m budget, becoming the highest-grossing musical film adaptation made to date and landing 10 nominations at the Academy Awards – including best picture – and winning two. Along with Erivo and Grande as the main characters in the movie, Wicked: For Good also stars Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero, Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible and Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard of Oz.
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Wicked: For Good' Trailer Pits Elphaba Vs. Glinda In Battle For Oz: 'There's No Going Back'
The trailer for Jon M. Chu's Wicked: For Good flew onto the scene Wednesday following limited time return-to-theater screenings of the first film. The clip gives a look at Cynthia Erivo's Elphaba and Ariana Grande's Glinda, now on separate sides of a battle for justice in Oz. Wicked: For Good arrives in theaters November 21, 2025. More from Deadline Everything We Know About 'Wicked: For Good' So Far 'Wicked: For Good' First Look: Galinda Exclaims 'Elphaba, They're Coming For You!' – CinemaCon Jon M. Chu Says 'Wicked: For Good' Will Feature More Dorothy: "We Tread Lightly" 'Elphaba Thropp, I know you're out here,' a white gowned Glinda tells the darkness outside her home before turning to see her once best friend, still cloaked in her black witch's garb, on her balcony. 'There's no going back,' Erivo's Elphaba says as she casts spells in a hidden cave. 'This is between the Wizard and I.' Wicked: For Good will star the green and pink duo as well as Jonathan Bailey reprising the role of Fiero, Marissa Bode reprising her role of Nessarose, Ethan Slater reprising his role of Boq and — if the soundtrack gives any clues: Jeff Goldblum returning as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz alongside Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible. RELATED: 'The Wicked Witch can't elude us forever, not with Prince Fiyero and his squadron hot on her trail,' Yeoh's Morrible declares as the clip pans to Bailey's Fiyero in green and gold garb. As Glinda puts on a swirly, sparkly crown, Elphaba tries her hand at skywriting with her broomstick, scrawling 'Our Wizard Lies' in a cloud. A snippet of 'No Good Deed' can be heard as viewers see Jeff Goldblum's Wizard of Oz working with contraptions, and Elphaba's (and Erivo's) long, manicured nails rest on a pile of bright yellow brick. 'Think of what we could do, together,' Glinda tells Elphaba in an echo from the first film. Snippets of Dorothy in her shiny silver heels and blue gingham dress can be seen throughout the clip as Glind walks down the aisle in a long white wedding train approaching Prince Fiyero. Chu cut both films side by side in the editing process ahead of the first film's release November 22, 2024. Some songs fans are greatly looking forward to include Elphaba and Fiyero's duet 'As Long As You're Mine,' Elphaba's 'No Good Deed' and Glinda and Elphaba's duet 'For Good, which can also be heard in the trailer. [youtube
