The Marriage Act

November 18, 2013
In this unconventional love story, author Monroy (Mexican High) explores the boundaries of commitment and the parameters that constitute a marriage. At age 21 in the year 2001, just following 9/11, Monroy finds herself down on one knee in a West Hollywood bar, proposing to her best friend Emir, a young, gay Muslim screenwriter who fears for his life should he be forced to return to his homophobic homeland (fictitiously entitled Emirstan). With his visa about to expire, Emir reluctantly accepts Monroy’s offer, though the young couple must hide their union from the author’s mother, a State Department Immigration Officer. Monroy wants to help Emir get a green card but she admits to ulterior motives as well: abandoned by her former fiancé, as well as by her father (her parents divorced when she was six), she seeks stability and her own kind of “asylum.” But she soon finds that the secrecy, deception, and complications of a green-card marriage to a gay man are challenging to say the least. Though at times the author’s actions are exasperating (she isn’t especially good at keeping secrets and seems overly attached to the idea of reuniting with a former lover), she writes and lives courageously. Monroy’s timely memoir rises beyond sex and politics, ultimately revealing that only two partners themselves can determine what makes their love and union authentic.

March 15, 2014
The story of a young writer who married her best friend to save them both. On Nov. 17, 2001, 22-year-old Monroy (Writing/Univ. of California, Santa Cruz; Mexican High, 2008) and her friend, Emir, were married in Las Vegas by an officiant dressed as Elvis. The ceremony's theatrical air couldn't have been more appropriate, for the pair was impersonating a straight couple in love in the service of facilitating permanent residency for Emir, a gay man from the Middle East who couldn't go home. Emir and the author, both aspiring screenwriters, had bonded years before while students at Emerson College. Both spoke three languages and had spent much of their childhoods outside the United States: Monroy accompanied her mother on her various posts in the Foreign Service, and Emir ventured to the States for the first time as an undergraduate international student. Following 9/11, Emir felt the pressure of heightened scrutiny of international students in the U.S., especially those of Muslim descent. Fearing her best friend would soon be deported to his home country, where others were routinely jailed and killed for being gay, Monroy proposed that Emir become her husband. At the time, the author was still smarting from having called off her engagement with a longtime beau, so the idea of platonic companionship proved attractive: "My initial thought process went something like this: romantic love is difficult and complicated. Marrying your gay best friend for his green card, by comparison, is not." Monroy then examines how naive that line of thinking was, as the two found themselves repeatedly having to conceal Emir's sexuality from his homophobic father and their marriage from Monroy's immigration fraud-fighting mother, co-workers, prospective love interests and, especially, the immigration officer who conducted Emir's green card interview. An accessible if slightly self-indulgent account showing the complexity of immigrating to the U.S. alongside semiprofound reflections on the meaning of marriage.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from December 15, 2013
Despite its breezy style, Monroy's provocative memoir offers more emotional food for thought than can possibly be digested in one sitting. After only reading the introduction, one might wish to remain quiet for a few minutes and ponder her use of the phrase gender-neutral marriage. As it applies to what is more commonly referred to as same-sex marriage, the phrase tones down the hot-button image implied by the words same sex. Which, as her experience so powerfully testifies, is arguably the least important element of a contractual agreement between two people who genuinely love one another. It is perhaps the ideal way to perceive of such civil unions, one that encompasses everyone's right to a legal marriage, regardless of the ability or intention to procreate. As such, this phraseology perfectly embodies Monroy's intentional marriage to a gay man. The gay man, you see, was in danger of being deported back to a country where he would most certainly have been tortured and killed. So, as his best friend, she proposed a green card marriage. Though fraught with one psychological or legal time bomb after another, the marriage worked, despite the unimaginable odds. The book is bright. It's chatty. But Monroy manages to deliver a hefty emotional wallop.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)