"My New York is the rattle of Mexican voices, Eastern European wailing at sundown, clipped Haitian tones, the Italian chefs in Bon Giorno yelling at me. "My New York is the look of complicity on your fellow illegal's face when you fill in the little box with your SS number, and your eyes slide hastily away for fear of discovery.
"My New York is tramping the streets trying to find cash-in-hand jobs, sucking on a cigarette you bummed from an old Dominican guy playing Dominoes sitting on an upturned beer crate in the street, worrying because you already spent $2.50 today, which is 50 cents more than your average daily allowance, and the rent is due Friday, and working for minimum wage or part time for ten bucks an hour, you're still $250 short, and there's no-one to call up, you're still new here, you don't know anyone..."
What do anal sex, circumcision and broken hearts have to do with illegal aliens? Not much perhaps - until Mimi New York's blog.
Freelance journalist Mimi Feo is in serious danger of becoming New York's Next Big Thing. She's a brazen 26-year-old Cambridge graduate with a filthy mouth and a talent for bluntness - and her beautifully-crafted blog is an unlikely mix of sexual adventure and heart-rending stories from New York's vast immigrant community.
Although she's only been blogging in the city for eight weeks, she's already been offered an interview on Fox News' O'Reilly Factor, coverage on radio and in the Times and a column in Village Voice as its 'resident illegal alien'. The blog now attracts up to 1000 readers a day, she says.
Mimi moved to New York intending to get a work visa, but found her situation 'spiralled' and ended up waitressing to pay the rent. By accident rather than design, her blog moved from tales of her first New York dates to problems finding legal work. Her work is carefully researched and well argued, and is fast becoming a focus for a vast and largely silent community on the wrong side of a complex and seemingly indiscriminate immigration system.
In March, New York magazine Village Voice picked up her story 'How to be an illegal alien' and traffic to her site rocketed. Emails started to pour in, from right-wingers threatening to track her down and deport her, to desperate messages for help from status-less aliens.
"What the story did was recognise that most illegals aren't here through choice - but through necessity. They're driven out of their homelands through political problems, by economic necessity or because they simply wanted something better," she told dotJournalism.
"They believed in the great enduring myth of the American dream - not realising, of course, that this is predominantly a white myth with a lot of small print."
Through the blog she met Amy and Kamal, both well-educated and ambitious young people brought to the US illegally as children. Despite living and working illegally in New York, they both pay tax and paid significant fees though university. The story is one that Mimi hears again and again.
"Some stories made me feel ashamed to write something so crass as 'I should be allowed to live here because I'm English, I have a degree and I write funny articles about sex that make people laugh'," said Mimi.
"I think sometimes you stumble onto what you're meant to be doing. I didn't think I would become the voice for all these illegals who are thanking me for voicing what they couldn't, and raising the profile of their plight."
Everyone can relate to sex
Immigration is an unsexy issue, said Mimi, which means it is largely ignored by the mainstream media. Financial pressure - partly caused by competition from online publications - means that newspapers and magazines increasingly fall back on safe, light, sexy content to sell themselves.
"There is so much going on that isn't even touched upon by the mainstream media," said Mimi.
"C'mon - make these issues sell! Get some good fucking writers on the case! People with enthusiasm and ideals, who can see that politics isn't necessarily boring and irrelevant - and that it can be just as interesting and relevant as whether your boyfriend likes a finger up his butt in the middle of sex!"
With that in mind, she admits that explicit stories about anal sex and bad dates bring traffic to the site.
"Very few can relate to my position as an illegal, but everyone can relate to dating or sex and then they get drawn into the illegal issue through that. My life is Sex and the City without the white people, with the politics," she said.
"I just want to raise awareness and give people hope - whether I'm writing schlock about anal sex or schlock about immigrants or well-researched pieces suitable for the New York Times."
Getting busted
Most recently, Mimi has been making around $1000 each month through writing and took an office job to make ends meet. She hated the job and was planning to quit on Friday - but before she had a chance a colleague discovered her blog and she was sacked.
Mimi's blog would have made for uncomfortable reading; she slated her colleague's taste for tweed suits with shoulder pads, and carefully documented the surreptitious flirtation with Leroy in the PR department.
So is Mimi the next Belle de Jour? Belle, who recently published a book based on her blog about life as a London prostitute, has undoubtedly been a big influence - and Mimi's book is already written, of course.
"Idealism, energy, humour and truth - that's what I aim for. It's a very weird underground world, and now I'm hooked."
More news from dotJournalism:
Mystery prostitute plagues UK press
The unstoppable Hoder - a life transformed by blogging
Comments? Email me.
Comments
From Ms F, 12:23 26 April 2005
My blog is better than that one you are writing about.
From Jemima Kiss, 17:24 26 April 2005
No it isn't.
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