Disunion: Ingrid Rojas Contreras

A Rift in the Family My in-laws gave me a book by a eugenicist. Our relationship is over.

I HAVEN'T TALKED to my in-laws for some time. A period of mutual silence stretched, glacial and peaceful, for seven years. Then just before the election, in late October, I received a letter from my mother-in-law, written on behalf of them both, asking if there was a path to reconciliation.

My in-laws are white, from the South and Midwest. My father-in-law, now retired, was a pastor in a Southern Baptist church. My mother-in-law was a nurse. They are dramatically conservative. I learned this over many years, gradually and in starker moments. One afternoon in 2017, when my husband and I were ten years into our marriage and we were sitting with his parents at our dining-room table in our apartment in California, my father-in-law began to lecture me about my lack of deference to him-how a woman owed obedience to her husband and her church and all the men in her life. I remember tilting my head to the side in disbelief. My mother-in-law sat, attentive, nodding, holding her hands. Sitting next to me, my husband put his hand on my leg, letting me know he was there and waiting for me to signal if I wanted him to intervene.

I grew up in Colombia. My mother was a curandera, a medicine woman.

My father was an engineer. We are of Indigenous descent. While I was brought up in the Catholic Church, I was also raised in a feminist household. My mother, who had a leader's mind and charisma, made most of the decisions; my father did the cooking and took directions, replying lovingly, "Yes, my general." My in-laws had long tried to make me conform to who they felt I should be.

I insisted on remaining exactly as I was.