Immigration Nerds: How a Book Club Keeps Immigration Practitioners Whole

In this episode of Immigration Nerds, Erickson Immigration Group's Lauren Clark talks with Ariel Rolls, an attorney at Grossman Young & Hammond whose practice includes asylum and Interpol Red Notice work.

Ariel chairs AILA DC's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee and organizes the AILA DC Belonging Book Club. Once a month on a Sunday, immigration lawyers and paralegals in the DC area meet for lunch to talk about a book they've all read, at a restaurant chosen to match it. Ariel drives a couple of hours from central Virginia each month to be there. The lunch gives them a break from the work, spent with people who already understand it.

Meet the Belonging Book Club

The club started in September 2024. At a DEI committee meeting on Zoom, then-member Savannah Anick mentioned she had joined a book club in her town and asked whether the chapter could start one. According to Ariel, everyone on the call "just kind of lit up at the idea."

Ariel says the point was to get away from the usual after-work format. Happy hours and networking events have their place, but this would meet "in the daylight," centered on real conversation and not on trading contacts or decompressing after a long day.

The committee chose the name on purpose. Its email address is belonging@ailadc.com, and Ariel says the word shapes what they're building. Inclusion gets someone a seat at the table. Belonging means they feel their presence is valued once they sit down.

Why the Food Matters

Pairing each book with a restaurant began partly for practical reasons. The group needed somewhere to meet, and a restaurant was easier than a law firm conference room. When the club tried meeting at a firm and online, members said they wanted to go back to restaurants. Over time, the meal became central to the club.

Ariel shared two afternoons that show why.

At a Palestinian restaurant, a member who is an immigrant herself ordered a milk-based drink that looked like one from her home country. She asked the staff to change it to match how she drank it back home, and they looked at her like she'd lost her mind. She drank it as they served it anyway, and the first sip took her straight back to her childhood.

After the club read Dominicana by Angie Cruz, they went to Mecho's Dominican Kitchen in DC. It's a strip-mall spot with a mural on the wall and music playing. Ariel is vegetarian and didn't know what to order, so another member, Laura, pointed out a fish dish that Ana, the protagonist, cooks in the novel. In the book, Ana arrives from the Dominican Republic at 15. Food is her link to home, and later it gives her a way to earn money and some independence. Eating that dish while discussing her story, Ariel said, "it did feel like Ana was with us."

Lessons From a 500-Page First Pick

The club started with Jonathan Blitzer's Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here, a 500-page history of how U.S. policy in Central America helped create the crisis at the border. The kickoff lunch at El Tamarindo, a Salvadoran restaurant, was one of the club's best-attended meetings. The trouble came later. The group split the book across several months, and attendance dropped quickly. Ariel admitted it was "a bit hard to live inside one book for a couple months at a time."

Longtime member Eva Morgenstern, who is on the EIG team, suggested switching to lighter reads. The club now reads one book per month, and members vote on every pick. The lineup has gone back and forth between fiction, memoir, and comedy, and includes Vietnamerica, GB Tran's memoir told as a graphic novel. Eva has also pointed out that fiction is easier to take on emotionally after a full day of practice than journalism is. Ariel mostly agrees, though she notes that a novel can sometimes hit harder than a memoir because it lets you inside the narrator's head.

Some books have split the room. Dominicana drew strong reactions to how it portrays men and womanhood. The Ungrateful Refugee by Dina Nayeri lost some readers with its stream-of-consciousness style until other members explained why Nayeri chose it. Ariel says that's why the lunches work: "We're all reading the same book, but we come to it with different perspectives, and we also leave reading the book with different perspectives."

From the Lunch Table to the Client Meeting

Lauren asked whether the books change how Ariel works with clients. Ariel, who is the child of immigrants, said yes. Fiction and memoir show her reasons people migrate that she hadn't known about, often specific to a region.

Her clearest example was All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews. The narrator is an Indian immigrant whose employer sponsors her visa. From the outside it looks like a fair deal. Told from her perspective, it reads as a steady loss of freedom. Ariel says she brings that perspective into client conversations now. She doesn't claim to know everything, but conversations are more open because she understands more about what clients may be living through.

How to Join

The club has about 50 members on its online platform, and a core group of six to eight attend most months. Ariel holds the meeting as long as three or four people come. Attendees include attorneys from nonprofits, private firms, and solo practices, along with paralegals and affiliated members. You can find the club on bookclubs.com or email belonging@ailadc.com. The October pick was Jimmy O. Yang's How to American: An Immigrant's Guide to Disappointing Your Parents, chosen after a heavier novel the month before. When Ariel misheard the title and searched for it at the table, Google offered her advice on how to disappoint your immigrant parents.

---

Quote Highlight

Standout advice: Ariel's message to colleagues who love the work but are running on empty is to show up, even if they're unprepared:

"Please come along. Please come even if you haven't read the book, even if you don't know what we're gonna be talking about. We will welcome you in with open arms."

A quote that resonates: Her explanation of why the club is called Belonging:

"We didn't just want everyone to have a seat at the table... we wanted everyone to feel like their presence is valued, like they truly do belong, like we are a community."

Call to Action

If this conversation reminded you why you got into immigration work, subscribe to Immigration Nerds wherever you get your podcasts, and follow EIG's updates at eiglaw.com. Each episode promises to enrich your understanding and keep you informed about the ever-evolving landscape of immigration policies. If you're in the DC area, or willing to drive like Ariel, email belonging@ailadc.com and save yourself a seat.