Latest / National Immigration Law Center Freedom to Thrive Podcast / Ep. #112 The Power of Books | Roxanne Coady

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Ep. #112 The Power of Books | Roxanne Coady · National Immigration Law Center Freedom to Thrive Podcast

• 0:00
  Growing up in a house with 11 people was a little chaotic at times.
• 0:04
  Someone was always up to crazy shenanigans, privacy was not a thing,
• 0:09
  and personal space was hard to come by.
• 0:12
  I learned at a very young age that I could escape through books.
• 0:16
  I read everything I could get my hands on, encyclopedias, newspapers,
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  even my older siblings' textbooks.
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  Books have the power to change lives, awaken our consciousness,
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  and spur movements, which is why over history they've been banned and even burned.
• 0:33
  Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, which details the forced relocation
• 0:38
  and genocide of Native Americans in the U.S.,
• 0:40
  is a book which taught me a history I did not learn in my public schooling and
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  was a precursor to my undergraduate Chicano studies work,
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  where I learned about similar atrocities committed against my indigenous North
• 0:53
  American ancestors by Spaniards in what is now modern-day Mexico,
• 0:58
  all of which was part of my own journey to a career spent working for social justice.
• 1:03
  The history that I learned through books serves as a reminder that we must never
• 1:08
  forget our shared humanity.
• 1:10
  The historical moment in which we find ourselves is filled with dehumanizing
• 1:15
  anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy, both at home and abroad.
• 1:19
  And as I've said before on this podcast, When We Allow for the Dehumanization
• 1:24
  of a People, Atrocities Follow.
• 1:26
  So it feels especially urgent that we continue to tell our stories and share
• 1:31
  our narratives through books or otherwise, as immigrants, children of immigrants,
• 1:37
  and descendants of Indigenous people.
• 1:40
  Today's guest, Roxanne Cody, is the daughter of Hungarian immigrants.
• 1:44
  She's the founder of R.J. Julia Booksellers, a national leader among independent booksellers.
• 1:50
  She's the creator and founder of Read to Grow, the largest literacy program in Connecticut.
• 1:56
  And she's the creator and host of Just the Right Book podcast.
• 2:00
  Roxanne Cody, whose family was personally impacted by the Holocaust during World
• 2:04
  War II, has a powerful story to tell.
• 2:07
  This is the NILC Freedom to Thrive podcast, powering pro-immigrant narratives, one story at a time.
• 2:15
  I'm Victoria Ballesteros, Executive Vice President of Narrative at the National
• 2:19
  Immigration Law Center.
• 2:21
  Hi, Roxanne. How are you? Good. How are you doing?
• 2:25
  I'm great. I love that we share a passion for books. I'm so excited to talk
• 2:30
  with you. Well, we definitely share that.
• 2:32
  Yeah. I want to be you when I grow up. I want to be surrounded by books and
• 2:37
  working in books. And, you know, I read something really beautiful about you,
• 2:41
  Roxanne, that you developed a love of reading as a child, reading newspapers with your father.
• 2:47
  Is that true? Can you share a little bit about that?
• 2:50
  Yeah, sure. So my parents emigrated to the United States in 1946.
• 2:57
  And in fact, as an aside, my mother was on the first transport out of Europe
• 3:06
  after Truman had signed the Truman Doctrine in December of 45,
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  because we were an isolationist country from 1924 until 45.
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  So my mother was on the first ship that came out.
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  She was in a displaced persons camp in Germany after having been liberated from Auschwitz.
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  So they arrived in 46. I was born in 49.
• 3:39
  And my dad, who had grown up with a love of reading, I was learning to read.
• 3:48
  He was learning English.
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  So my dad and I, we'd get the New York Post.
• 3:55
  He'd come home from work. It was the afternoon paper. And together,
• 3:59
  he learned to read English. I learned to read. And we read the newspaper.
• 4:04
  And to this day, you know, which is 70 years later, 70 something years later,
• 4:12
  the pleasure of reading a print newspaper stays with me.
• 4:16
  Yes. Yes. That's beautiful. So do you still read the newspaper every day?
• 4:22
  I read three newspapers a day. Oh my goodness. That's amazing. In print.
• 4:28
  Yeah. Yeah. I know like Kindles and other digital reading devices are very popular,
• 4:33
  but there's something about holding a book or a newspaper in your hand that
• 4:38
  is just, I don't know, there's nothing like it.
• 4:41
  Well, besides that, there's research that shows that actually different parts
• 4:49
  of your brain light up when you're reading digitally from analog.
• 4:56
  And what I find from my own experience, I don't retain information or focus
• 5:02
  when I'm reading digitally as opposed to reading in print,
• 5:08
  whether it's a newspaper or magazine or a book. Yeah. Yeah.
• 5:13
  That's amazing. And so, So, you know, I also read about your grandmother and
• 5:19
  sacrifices that she made to ensure that your father could get an education.
• 5:23
  It was another beautiful story that I read. Can you share more about that?
• 5:27
  Yeah, sure. So my dad lived in a small town in Hungary by the name of Turek
• 5:35
  Szentmi Klosch, and his father had died from tuberculosis right after his bar mitzvah.
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  So that would have been in about 1938 or
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  9 and my mother my
• 5:48
  grandmother was pretty poor at that point so she apprenticed out my dad but
• 5:56
  got for him to accomplish that he could stay in school But once the Germans were in Hungary,
• 6:08
  all the Jews had to, you know, they were in a ghetto, they had to leave school.
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  And my grandmother figured out a way for my father to stay in school and counted
• 6:23
  on something that's the equivalent of panhandling.
• 6:27
  Your grandmother is behind the name of the R.J. Julia Bookstore, correct?
• 6:32
  Yep. So when I left New York, I was in the finance world and decided to open the bookstore.
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  And we were trying to come up with names.
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  One of the things that I've always had this affection for the notion of my grandmother.
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  I mean, not only...
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  Was she brave that she was the one who instilled the love of reading in my dad,
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  who instilled the love of reading in me.
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  My father was, he was a baker and that was his profession, but he was the most voracious reader.
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  And so starting with reading the newspaper, what my dad and I always shared
• 7:25
  is this just love of words, love of books, love of learning.
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  And so I thought, well, wouldn't it be fun to name the store after my grandmother?
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  And probably one of the most satisfying moments in my life was my father coming
• 7:46
  to the bookstore after we built it and opened it and realizing it was named after his mother.
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  You know, you can imagine.
• 7:58
  Yeah. Yeah. What a beautiful tribute and what a beautiful story.
• 8:03
  Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. You mentioned that shift, right?
• 8:07
  So you were, I believe you had a significant corporate career and then you transitioned
• 8:12
  and opened the bookstore. What was that like?
• 8:14
  Because that's a pretty significant change to make.
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  And you meant career. Was it early in your career?
• 8:20
  So I was married at that time. I got married when I was 20.
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  And so I was turning 40. I was a national tax director at one of the international accounting firms.
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  And for most of my adult life, I hadn't wanted kids because I had raised kids. I'm the oldest of six.
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  And in immigrant families, you're raising your siblings.
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  And the age difference between me is the oldest and my youngest sister is 16 years.
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  Oh, wow. So I had done their school conferences. I had done their college applications
• 9:04
  with them, their college tours, all of that.
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  So I was pretty ambitious, wanted a career, and thought I didn't want kids,
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  and then changed my mind in my late 30s.
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  But it was seemingly not to be.
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  So I thought, my husband and I talked it over, and we had had some success and thought, well,
• 9:33
  what's the sense of just keep making money when we have an opportunity to do
• 9:40
  something that would speak more to our heart than our head?
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  For me, that would always be related to books.
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  I wasn't sure whether I'd want to be a publisher or a writer,
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  but I didn't know anything about publishing.
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  I'm not a great writer. And I thought, well, what I've been spending my whole
• 10:02
  life doing is talking about books and getting friends excited about reading this book or that book.
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  So why don't I make that a career?
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  So I had to give six months notice at my firm, which I did. and then I bought
• 10:20
  the building that the bookstore is in in 1989.
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  I had given notice to my firm in January of 89 and then decided to try one more in vitro.
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  Which worked. So I opened the bookstore in April of 90 and had my son in June of 90.
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  So I was in my eighth month when I opened the bookstore.
• 10:47
  Edward's probably the only kid with a bookstore as his sibling.
• 10:51
  Oh yeah, he had two babies. But the decision, you know,
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  I loved my career doing tax work and I did a lot of merger and acquisition work
• 11:04
  and it was exciting and I traveled all over the world. It was great.
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  But, you know, it's nice to have an opportunity to do something else.
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  And although people were shocked because it seemed like a sharp left turn,
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  it looked logical to
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  me my husband was game and so
• 11:28
  it was it was definitely about taking the opportunity to do what was about my
• 11:39
  heart you know I had always done what was about my head and what you find out
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  in running any business I mean there are 70 employees,
• 11:48
  you need your head and your heart.
• 11:51
  Yeah. To do that. That's a big operation.
• 11:54
  Yeah. I think, yeah. I think milk has 70 employees. Yeah. Wow.
• 11:58
  That's a really big operation. Yeah. Well, we have three stores.
• 12:02
  Okay. Okay. Yeah. We manage two stores, Wesleyan's bookstore and a bookstore in the Hamptons.
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  And, and then obviously RJ Joy and And R.J. Joy is now 35 years old.
• 12:16
  Wow. Congratulations. But it's a big store and a big operation.
• 12:20
  Yeah. With a lot of phenomenal.
• 12:24
  Oh, yeah. Yeah. But, you know, one of the pleasures that I hadn't appreciated was...
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  The idea that we could be a certain kind of place to work, that we could be
• 12:39
  a place where you felt seen and heard and appreciated, and that we all shared a sense of purpose.
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  So a good deal of the store's success is about the people who have worked there
• 12:54
  and do work there now. Yeah.
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  Yeah. And obviously your leadership and setting up that culture,
• 13:01
  congratulations on the success. Thank you.
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  Yeah. And, and it's funny what you said about immigrant families,
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  you know, children raising the other children, because I am the youngest of
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  nine and I like to joke that I was raised. Yeah. I was raised by wolves.
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  So that should answer all questions.
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  Yeah. So, yeah. So does your son, I think you said his name is Edward.
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  Does your son also love books?
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  He does. You know, it was an interesting arc because he was dyslexic.
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  Oh he was very dyslexic and
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  he didn't read until third grade oh wow
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  and people who were not so
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  thoughtful would say oh my god it must be awful for you to have a kid who doesn't
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  read and you have a bookstore and i was like he'll get there right and he obviously
• 13:49
  did get there and he is as voracious a reader as I am. Oh, I love it.
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  He, you know, he reads, he, he reads a lot of nonfiction, less fiction.
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  I also read a lot of nonfiction, but yeah, he does love to read.
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  And one of the things that's funny is when we opened the store,
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  one of its goals was to be a place of civic conversation.
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  So we host about 300 author events a year.
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  And when, because Edward had been born simultaneous with the store,
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  we had all the books signed to Edward.
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  So Edward has books from, you know, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton and Allen
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  Ginsberg and, you know, Anderson Cooper and Barbara Walters and Jimmy Carter and John McCain.
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  And yeah, he's got quite the library.
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  Wow. That's incredible. I can only imagine 300 events a year.
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  That's one a day almost. That's a lot. Oh yeah. That's right.
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  That's about... Last night at the bookstore, speaking of immigrants,
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  We had Hernan Diaz is the author of Trust that won the Pulitzer and his first
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  book in the distance was a finalist for the Pulitzer.
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  And he had been born in Argentina.
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  And then his family fled Argentina when there was a military coup,
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  went to Sweden, back to Argentina, and ultimately to the United States.
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  And the event last night was evidence number one in why it was my dream to have a bookstore.
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  Hernan is inspiring and brilliant. and his use of language is extraordinary.
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  And, you know, we have a store full of people listening to him and learning from him.
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  He and I were in conversation. It was just, it's just the, you know, to me, it's the dream.
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  Yeah. And, you know, it, one of the things that bookstores have become are what I call the town green.
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  Yeah. And I remember on September 11th, 2001, I went and got a TV to set up a TV in the store.
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  And the store was packed for weeks.
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  Nobody was buying anything, but the store was packed because they wanted to
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  be in what they considered a refuge or a safe place,
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  but they didn't want to be at a bar or they didn't.
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  And the store, which is, you know, about 8,000 square feet with an outdoor patio
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  and cafe was the safe space. Yeah.
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  And that, you know, I think where there
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  is so much turmoil and disagreement and tension that most bookstores have retained
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  the capacity to be a third place where we'll have events that are provocative in their topic,
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  but there has never been an instance where the debate wasn't civil.
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  And I think it's sort of the aura of the store, not just R.J.
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  Julia, but any independent bookstore, that this is a place where we engage in
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  debate to learn from each other, that we ask questions, not dictate answers.
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  And that's a part of the store that I imagined when I opened it,
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  but I didn't imagine that we would come to live in such tense,
• 18:00
  partisan.
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  Uncivic,
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  ways, because that wasn't the way it was then. Obviously it is now.
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  Yet the bookstore, knock on wood, has retained that capacity. Yeah.
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  That's incredible. Yeah. And I love that.
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  I would also add for me and my personal experience, bookstores and libraries.
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  Libraries have played that role for me as well. Also with my own son of having
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  spaces where the community comes together, people from all different backgrounds,
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  and just enjoy some time together in a very, you know, calm and civil space,
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  which is really beautiful.
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  Yeah. When I was a kid, the library, we couldn't afford books when I was really young.
• 18:46
  Yeah. And so the books I would have were, my parents got me golden books because they were a dime.
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  And so periodically we could get that. But library to me was,
• 18:59
  you know, a form of heaven.
• 19:00
  Yeah, same. It still is for me.
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  It was an insanely appealing, comforting place for me.
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  And my parents, you know, one of the things that one of the libraries when my
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  family moved from New York to Hartford.
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  And then I'll tell you a story, was I wanted to read from the adult section.
• 19:27
  Yeah. And you needed permission because I was like in fifth grade.
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  And my mother obviously gave me permission.
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  And I just like started at the beginning of the alphabet. Oh, wow.
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  I actually started reverse because the first adult book I read was by Leon Uris, and it was Exodus.
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  And I thought I was like in sixth grade
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  because I think it was published in 1959 so I was 10 or 11 and I thought wow
• 19:59
  all this sex and romance and history and war I I just couldn't believe that
• 20:06
  you know what a book could be compared to you know my reading the Hardy Boys right.
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  The adult books is where it's at.
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  That's what I learned really fast. But the story I wanted to tell you that was,
• 20:25
  I think, apropos of the organization and an interesting question to contemplate.
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  So I took my son to the Tenement Museum in New York and the tenement I grew
• 20:38
  up in was around in the corner.
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  It was on Willett Street, which is between Grand and Delancey,
• 20:45
  right under the Williamsburg Bridge.
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  And Edward and I are walking over there and the building is down,
• 20:52
  but he says, mom, describe for me what the apartment was like.
• 20:56
  You know, how did it compare to the apartment we saw in the Tenement Museum? I said, well, smaller.
• 21:02
  We had two rooms and one
• 21:05
  room had a sink and a bathtub that
• 21:08
  was the living room and then there was another room that was the bedroom and
• 21:12
  the toilets were all on the ground floor they were sort of lined up in what
• 21:18
  you wouldn't really call a lobby but was the lobby so you have i don't remember
• 21:23
  i think it was like five bathrooms or toilets they were like water closets.
• 21:29
  And I'm telling this to Edward and he says, you know, mom, when you tell me
• 21:33
  that story, it feels like you should be my grandmother.
• 21:36
  Like, how can it be that I'm a kid who went to private school,
• 21:42
  plays tennis, you know, sales and lives an extremely privileged life?
• 21:50
  How could it be that this is one generation? The grampy came here and you lived
• 21:56
  in that kind of apartment. How could that be?
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  And the conversation we had was, could that happen to an immigrant coming to the country today?
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  Could there be that kind of vast change in circumstances where the child of
• 22:16
  an immigrant and the grandchild of an immigrant could be so American and privileged?
• 22:25
  Yeah. So what do you think, Victoria? you? Oh, well, you know,
• 22:30
  it is an important question or an interesting question to ponder because we're
• 22:36
  talking about wealth, right?
• 22:39
  Wealth that creates that level of privilege.
• 22:42
  And so I don't know how one attains that kind of wealth in one generation.
• 22:48
  But I will say my son and I have had this conversation because my parents,
• 22:53
  for example, didn't go to school. I mean, at all. If anything,
• 22:57
  maybe first grade level of education.
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  My father taught himself to read and write. I didn't speak English until I was five.
• 23:06
  And but I feel like I've been relatively successful, maybe not to the same degree,
• 23:12
  but and my son enjoys privileges that I never experienced. And we talk about
• 23:17
  he's only one like one generation away from that.
• 23:20
  Right. So I do think is that what people call the American dream? I don't know.
• 23:24
  Is that the dream that immigrants bring that that there is opportunity for growth,
• 23:29
  opportunity for for thriving, right?
• 23:34
  Yes. Education being a part of that. Yes. Ability to thrive as a human,
• 23:40
  the ability to have self-determination.
• 23:42
  And I think those things are privileges in comparison to what it's like in other countries. Right.
• 23:47
  So, yes, I do think those things are certainly attainable. but we're moving backwards.
• 23:53
  We're moving backwards with this current anti-immigrant hostility and dehumanization
• 23:59
  and promises of mass deportations and threats of violence, like all of that
• 24:04
  stuff, I do think threatened to move backwards.
• 24:08
  Yeah. Yeah. And you know, Victoria, to that point, when my father was.
• 24:15
  Ship came in on the upper or like
• 24:18
  midtown west side because this
• 24:21
  was shortly after the holocaust had ended
• 24:24
  so you had refugees still wasn't easy to get in
• 24:27
  this country you know refugees were
• 24:30
  not so welcome but jewish organizations
• 24:35
  my father because he was a baker within days
• 24:39
  my father had an apartment and
• 24:42
  a job oh wow an apartment and
• 24:45
  a job victoria because he was a baker couldn't
• 24:48
  speak a word of english couldn't read english but because he had a concrete
• 24:55
  skill yeah and they put him in an apartment they put my dad an apartment in
• 25:01
  on the upper east side in yorkville with like a plumber and an electrician.
• 25:07
  So they were all skilled blue collar workers.
• 25:12
  But think about, just think about that in today's time.
• 25:16
  They had a job and an apartment in short order.
• 25:23
  That's what, you know, that's what makes me sad when I think of uneducated immigrants
• 25:31
  coming to the country now.
• 25:34
  I mean, cause my father was educated. My mother, my mother had to leave school
• 25:39
  when the Nazis came to her town.
• 25:40
  She only had a third grade education and she got a job sewing.
• 25:45
  You know, she knew what to sew. So she worked in a factory in New York city,
• 25:50
  but she had a job. Yeah. Yeah.
• 25:54
  And that's where I feel like we're just not thinking right about how to help
• 26:00
  people, A, welcome people to the country, but two, set them up to succeed. Yeah.
• 26:08
  I do think a lot of immigrants have these informal networks, family members.
• 26:14
  Friends of family members that play that role sometimes of welcoming them and
• 26:20
  helping them get established with a place to sleep, a place to live, maybe a job connection.
• 26:26
  But I will say our immigration system has made it incredibly difficult for people
• 26:32
  to do that through formal structures.
• 26:34
  Right. And, you know, our immigration system hasn't been updated in 30 years.
• 26:39
  That was the last time that any significant changes were made.
• 26:42
  It's very outdated. I think it's dysfunctional by design.
• 26:46
  And that's why it's really important, you know,
• 26:49
  the work that NILC does and other pro-immigrant organizations are working to
• 26:54
  ensure that we create more and better pathways for immigrants to not only come to this country,
• 27:02
  but also establish the ability to thrive in ways that they can find for themselves.
• 27:08
  Well, did you read the article recently about the kids in the Florida school
• 27:14
  that were undocumented at the time of the shooting?
• 27:21
  And there's a law that allows kids or immigrants that suffer trauma in the United
• 27:30
  States to get accelerated citizenship or visas.
• 27:35
  And it's still not happening. And the backlist,
• 27:39
  the back log for them is a different department in immigration.
• 27:48
  And that's an eight-year wait.
• 27:50
  These are kids who suffered and they were promised something.
• 27:54
  And we can't even goddamn deliver that.
• 27:57
  Right. I mean, that's crazy to me. Like, why is that so difficult and complicated?
• 28:03
  Yeah. Yeah, it's, you know, we recently had an interesting conversation with
• 28:08
  some folks that made a film about our border industrial complex.
• 28:14
  And their position is that it's cruel by design.
• 28:17
  There's cruelty by design, right, in our, in our, the things that we fund.
• 28:23
  Well, it feels that way. Yeah. Yeah, it certainly feels that way. It does feel that way.
• 28:26
  Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of room for us to continue advocating and doing better.
• 28:32
  Doing better by immigrants who are coming to the country.
• 28:35
  For a better life. So let me just, I wanted to ask you really quickly because
• 28:38
  I've heard that you have an encyclopedic knowledge of books and that doesn't surprise me.
• 28:43
  And that you're also really good at recommending a book to someone.
• 28:48
  And so how does that work and what book would you recommend to me or what book
• 28:53
  would you recommend for people who love to read books either written by immigrants
• 28:58
  or books about immigrants?
• 29:00
  You mentioned one already that you hosted the event yesterday, but are there others?
• 29:04
  One of the immigrant writers that has become very controversial and wrote a
• 29:12
  book called The Sympathizer.
• 29:14
  Oh, yes. He's written a number of books. He's a Vietnamese.
• 29:20
  Yeah. Yes. I'm reading all his books right now.
• 29:24
  And I love the first one
• 29:27
  more than I loved the rest yeah but he has become very controversial with a
• 29:34
  theory that I don't agree with which is it's the notion that you are either
• 29:41
  an oppressor or the oppressed.
• 29:45
  Okay. And it falls a little bit into the category of Ibram Kendi's anti-racist book,
• 29:55
  which I think is a brilliant book, but it leaves no room for nuance.
• 30:04
  And the response to saying there's no room for nuance is that you're trying
• 30:09
  to wiggle out of responsibility.
• 30:11
  Yeah and I don't agree with that
• 30:14
  and I think that he's taken a hard line on that but he is a brilliant writer
• 30:20
  and I think his writing about the experience of being an immigrant yeah is phenomenal
• 30:28
  the other book I love not written by an immigrant is by T.C.
• 30:33
  Boyle okay called Tortilla curtain, maybe?
• 30:40
  Anyway, this is one of the most stunning books about the relationship of Mexican
• 30:51
  immigrants and U.S. employers.
• 30:56
  Let me look up the right title of this. I'm going to look for that one.
• 31:00
  You know, it's an old book.
• 31:03
  I'll think of more the minute we hang up, of course. Well, you know,
• 31:08
  it's interesting what you're saying about Viet Thanh Nguyen is...
• 31:11
  That notion that he's bringing up, that's one of the beauties of being an artist
• 31:15
  or writer, of having books where you introduce these ideas that we may not necessarily
• 31:20
  agree with, but they'll stimulate thought, conversations,
• 31:24
  spur consciousness, right? Which I just love. That's the beauty.
• 31:28
  Yeah. You know, Hernan Diaz had a phrase that books bring us the co-joining
• 31:36
  of emotional feelings and intellectual insight.
• 31:41
  Yes. And to me, I love reading dark, provocative books because that's how you learn.
• 31:49
  You know, that to me, there is nothing more exciting to me than reading to develop
• 31:56
  empathy for people that are not me. Yeah.
• 32:03
  That's how you become a better human being, right? Because you are literally
• 32:08
  coming as close as you can to walking in their shoes when they've done their
• 32:14
  job. So it is called Tortilla Curtain.
• 32:16
  Tortilla Curtain. Okay. So, you know, I have so many questions that we're not
• 32:20
  going to have a chance to get to, but I do recommend The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen.
• 32:24
  That is a book of his short stories, glimpses into, you know,
• 32:28
  being a refugee from Vietnam, short fiction, but I imagine drawn from his own personal experiences.
• 32:34
  And, you know, in our last few minutes together, what do you make of book bans
• 32:39
  that are happening today in our country by wannabe or would-be authoritarians?
• 32:44
  To me, it's the opposite.
• 32:47
  We're trying to close minds instead of open minds where they'll be more generously
• 32:55
  spirited, more informed, more empathetic.
• 32:59
  Yeah it's just it defies anything
• 33:02
  I can understand to be banning books
• 33:05
  and the degree and acceleration of it is
• 33:08
  is appalling yeah it
• 33:12
  is and I think that's the point is to close thought but I will say what I've
• 33:16
  heard is that anytime a book gets banned it automatically skyrockets in sales
• 33:21
  oh yeah definitely so it's kind of counter counter effective I guess not to
• 33:27
  the degree that I'd want it to be, but to some degree. Yeah.
• 33:31
  Roxanne, what is your bookstore's website? Do you have a website where people
• 33:35
  can learn more? It's rjjulia.com.
• 33:38
  Rjjulia.com. Roxanne, thank you so much for joining me. It's been such a delight
• 33:43
  talking with me. You're welcome.
• 33:46
  Well, thank you for the work you're doing. Thank you. Okay. Be well.
• 33:51
  I want to thank our listeners for spending time with us.
• 33:54
  For more immigration truths, visit us at nilk.org and freedomtothrive.com.
• 33:59
  And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes.
• 34:03
  I look forward to continuing this conversation with all of you.