Immigration reform swirls around us. Immigrants, documented and undocumented, live among us. All of us, even Native Americans, are offspring of immigrants. No matter how far you have to trace back, your ancestors experienced being strangers and newcomers on the American continent. Many of them experienced being aliens. Probably many of them felt they were exiles or even considered themselves banished to a new and strange place. Reports of immigration on the Oregon Trail tell that women more than men felt such strangeness out there.

What's it like being an alien, a minority person, not a citizen? What's it like in a place and society whose ways are as foreign to you as you are to that society? Today in the US, it can be because you have Asian eyes or darker skin. The feeling arises continu…