The Marriage Act: The Risk I Took to Keep My Best Friend in America, and What It Taught Us About Love

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. (Jan.)