Emma's Right

American-born Fil Guijarro never expected that having a child with his East-German-born wife would lock him in Berlin and draw him into a vortex of lawsuits. Bolstered by a hesitant legal system and led on by her own parents, his wife vowed that he would never again have private access to their two-year-old daughter, Emma, and keeps father and daughter apart for nearly two years. Emma's Right is the autobiographical account of a father who will stop at nothing to uphold his...
More Description

American-born Fil Guijarro never expected that having a child with his East-German-born wife would lock him in Berlin and draw him into a vortex of lawsuits. Bolstered by a hesitant legal system and led on by her own parents, his wife vowed that he would never again have private access to their two-year-old daughter, Emma, and keeps father and daughter apart for nearly two years. Emma's Right is the autobiographical account of a father who will stop at nothing to uphold his daughter's right to grow up with equal access to her father and mother -- a father who navigates through a legal labyrinth in order to assert his parental role and to instill his heritage in Emma's life. But the legal machine turns a blind eye to the bigger issue at hand: Emma's maternal grandfather was part of the Stasi, the ruthless state security ministry of East Germany that until 1990 trained its agents to systematically defame and morally disintegrate the lives of their ideological opponents. Emma's mother accuses Guijarro of being psychologically ill and dangerous to Emma, until a string of psychiatrists prove her wrong. Finding himself a modern-day victim of the Stasi's legacy of defamation, Guijarro writes this poignant memoir for his daughter and documents his own truth, describing thwarted attempts in court to gain regular weekend visitation with Emma, and tender moments when father and daughter have brief moments of contact along the way.