A slip of paper

A single slip of paper that can change a life. 

A piece of paper, often dog-eared and softened by time, that allows you to enter, to leave, to avoid persecution, to start a new life with someone or somewhere else. That proves that you are indeed who you say you are.

I am surrounded by documents in my professional life as a translator: a diploma or transcript that will allow someone to further their studies or qualify for a new job in this country. A handwritten birth certificate from a West African country that will allow an child to be adopted and enter the country. A marriage or divorce decree that will provide someone the ability to get the coveted green card. I even have a document hanging on my office wall that attests to my ability to understand and translate these documents.

We vest a great deal of power in these documents. My father-in-law, raised in Germany in the 1930s, had to document his Aryan descent as a school project, to prove he was worthy of a free life. My grandmother and grandfather had to have a special stamp in a passport to visit post-war Japan to help rebuild the damage we had wrought. My husband and I had to document that we were not married to be allowed to marry each other--and then had to get a document that recognized that marriage so we could cross a border as a married couple. 

In my personal life piecing together my family's history, I cherish these documents as data points that provide the structure for stories of those who came before me. Once the person named in the document has passed, the paper abdicates its power, but becomes more interesting.  

With this perspective, it is easy to see the artifices that we have created: a piece of paper determines which country you "belong" to--and the borders of that nation may well change, as they too are an artifice. Other social constructs--marriage, nationality, admission into a religion or profession--are perhaps less artificial, but equally man-made.

The problem comes when we imbue paper with too much power: when a mark on a piece of paper serves to exclude or persecute; when a missing paper deprives a person of their rights or even life. The hashtag #resistancegenealogy has emerged to remind us to be vigilant of the power we give to people and documents. Lest we forget who we come from--for there is a paper trail. 

Too much power in one document