Musings #1

I promised you distraction from reality, and Musings #1 brings us back to reality with a thud—Anne of Green Gables reference intentional. These ponderings are “story-adjacent,” so feel free to ignore if you just want the promised distraction. The next episode will land as scheduled, bringing us back to the imaginary world of Looser Island.

WHO LAUGHS LAST is, and is intended to be, fanciful, not based in reality or even intended to be realistic.

(I mean, really, who ever heard of a mind-reading dog? Well, except for my dog. Obviously.)

The story of “Paulo,” in particular, is romanticized fantasy.

First, it is unlikely there is a community anywhere in the world, no matter how small and insular, where an immigrant would be unequivocally and universally welcomed.

Humanity’s penchant for war and political upheaval, natural disasters, food scarcity, the longing for freedom, and the survival instinct always have and always will lead to emigration from one place to another in search of safety, in search of a land where “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are sacred.

Also, where there are refugees there will be opportunists, human traffickers trading on refugees’ dreams, and people who see borders as a business opportunity for smuggling drugs and other goods. This, too, is a tale as old as time.[i]

As a result, communities overwhelmed with large groups of immigrants, or communities struggling with violence perpetrated by (among others) human traffickers, drug smugglers, and imported gangs will always feel conflicted about whether or how far to extend a welcome to immigrants.

Another not-credible aspect of Paulo’s story: it is extremely unlikely anyone could escape the ICEcapades of 2025.

As I mentioned in the Disclaimer, WHO LAUGHS LAST was first written over twenty years ago. I won’t claim the story was more credible then, or that twenty years ago we lived in a kinder, gentler world. But it was at least a world where people in the United States weren’t in danger of being kidnapped off the street by masked government agents and summarily shipped to a prison in another country where torture is allegedly on the Daily Activities Calendar, and from which there is no release. Ever.[ii]

So as you read WHO LAUGHS LAST, please remember that it is fiction, and intended to be mostly lighthearted fiction at that.

In any event, as you read later episodes you’ll realize WHO LAUGHS LAST isn’t really Paulo’s story at all. It’s the story of Jim’s crush, and old Jens Jensen’s loneliness, and Larry feeling stuck in a combative role he never really wanted, and Alessandra’s childish conviction that everywhere is better than home, how Cherry became the unofficial island Siren, the griefs that bind Lauren and Gloria, Sheriff Tom’s one wild moment of rebellion. Etcetera. Paulo’s arrival, and sudden departure, is a catalyst for many of the changes the other characters experience, but he himself hardly comes into the remaining episodes.

(In art as in reality, the poor and the powerless get only bit parts on the stage of life. To be clear, that doesn’t make it okay, in art or in life, but as a white, born-in-America writer, I am not qualified to tell stories about what it feels like to be an immigrant, so this book is not “about” Paulo.)

One more point: I want to respond to readers who are upset that Paulo was depicted as (a) migrating simply for economic opportunity, not fleeing horrific violence and/or (b) stealing from the woman who generously gave him a job.

On the first question, I personally know people who have fled their homes because of horrific violence; I wanted to portray a less extreme (but no less common) story.

On both questions, I offer this.

One of the things that often gets lost in the rhetoric—where one side says all immigrants are “murderers and rapists” and the other side suggests all immigrants are saints—is what most of us non-politicians know: immigrants are just people. Some are extraordinarily kind and hard-working. Some are vicious. Some are fleeing unimaginably desperate conditions, while others are simply seeking a better life for themselves and their families. Some have gone through the often years’ long process of obtaining documentation to live in the United States; some emigrate without legal authority (often at great financial cost and physical danger). There are few saints, and fewer demons. Most, like you and me and everyone else, are occasionally selfish, lazy, irritable, dishonest.

Human.

Obviously, I was not trying to portray Paulo as a hardened criminal, but some may still object to the idea that he would have committed theft at all. [iii] To that I say: faced with imminent arrest and detention for an indefinite period of time in abjectly miserable conditions [iv], with no money of your own and cash on a shelf in front of you, are you completely certain you wouldn’t take the cash, scribble an apology on the wall, and tell yourself you’d pay it back someday, somehow?

FOOTNOTES AND CITATIONS

[i] “Man’s inhumanity to man” (Robert Burns) is not new. For an interesting article on street gang violence in ancient Rome, see Gang Violence in the Late Roman Republic by Jeffrey Tatum (Cambridge University Press March 13, 2020) (edited by Garrett G. Fagan, Linda Fibiger, Mark Hudson, and Matthew Trundle), available here https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-world-history-of-violence/gang-violence-in-the-late-roman-republic/96CED83F2809A92747F1851032F1E7A6

And for a Wikipedia description of human trafficking in ancient Greece check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Greece#:~:text=The%20principal%20centres%20of%20the,were%20sold%20by%20their%20parents.

Also not new: America’s history of encouraging immigration (or forcing immigration i.e. slavery) to provide cheap labor, and then turning on the immigrants. It is a shameful story that's been repeated ad nauseum. For just one example, consider the brutality toward Chinese immigrants in the late 1800s https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-forgotten-history-of-the-purging-of-chinese-from-america. (And of course there is the fact that much of that was occurring simultaneously with the horrors visited on Black people during the Reconstruction Era.)

[ii] By now we’ve all seen the stories of the man who was deported to CECOT “due to an administrative error.” https://www.npr.org/2025/04/01/nx-s1-5347427/maryland-el-salvador-error. And there is evidence he wasn’t the only one who was detained and then deported without cause, and without any opportunity to prove his innocence.

For information on the conditions in CECOT, where the US is shipping immigrants without regard to whether they’ve committed any crimes and without regard to whether they are legally in the US, see https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250128-no-way-out-grim-conditions-in-el-salvador-s-mega-prison-for-gangs

[iii] To those who claim our nation is suffering from a wave of immigrant-perpetrated crime, note that every study I’ve seen has pointed to some version of this conclusion:

“A crucial fact in contrast with the ramped up immigration enforcement over the last two decades is that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than similar US natives. This is not to say that immigrants never commit crimes. But the evidence is clear that they are not more likely to do so than US natives. In the face of such evidence, policies aimed at reducing the number of immigrants, including unauthorized immigrants, seem unlikely to reduce crime and increase public safety.”

From the synopsis of Do Immigrants Threaten US Public Safety? by Pia Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny (Center for Growth and Opportunity at the Utah State University July 2, 2019), available here https://cmsny.org/publications/jmhs-orrenius-zavodny-070219/

I know people living in or near border towns, and nothing in this Musings #1 is intended to dismiss their lived experiences or their concerns. As I said earlier, “man’s inhumanity to man” is not new.

[iv] Though the current situation is so much worse than it was twenty years ago, inhumane conditions in ICE detention centers in the US are also not new, especially since the government started contracting with private companies to house detainees. As with so many things, profit is not a great incentive for compassion, and conditions at these privately-run detention centers showcase how easily we dehumanize and then justify abusing immigrants. https://immigrantjustice.org/research-items/policy-brief-snapshot-ice-detention-inhumane-conditions-and-alarming-expansion