Studying and traveling abroad over the course of the last five months, so many people have welcomed me into their lives – yet as strangers graciously welcomed me into their homes, treated me like a part of their families, cared for me when I was ill – my own country back home unleashed a landslide of anti-foreign policy designed to seal off American borders.
Maybe it is fear, maybe it’s easier to play the victim, maybe it’s because we don’t know where our problems stem from, and it’s easier to put faith in a tangible barricade than to stare them directly in the eye – but it is clear that little good can come from limiting our capacity for compassion and understanding, especially when most of our problems and fears are universally shared.
It is harrowing, is it is wicked, it is xenophobic, and it feels like a fast track backwards in time – but at it’s core, it is the peak of an era in which we have become deeply focused in the comfort of our own lives.
There are so many things we will never know because we were afraid to understand. In an age of stiffened borders, tightened legislation, barricades and literal walls to reinforce the psychological ones that already exist, these stories reveal alternative views of the expansive world that exists beyond the wall.
Welcome to The World Beyond the Wall, a collection of tales from the South Pacific.
Jules of the Sea 