Undocumented Americans

The Undocumented Americans

By Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

"Traveling across the country, journalist Karla Cornejo Villavicencio risked arrest at every turn to report the. . . stories of her fellow undocumented Americans,. . . [bringing] to light remarkable [tales] of hope and resilience [through which] we come to understand what it truly means to be American"--.

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Book Information

Publisher: One World
Publish Date: 03/24/2020
Pages: 208
ISBN-13: 9780399592683
ISBN-10: 0399592687
Language: Eng

What We're Saying

January 12, 2021

We will be announcing the overall winner of the 2020 Porchlight Business Book Awards on January 14. Until then, we are taking a look back at the books in contention for the award. Today, we have the books in the Narrative & Biography category. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

December 03, 2020

These are the 40 books we found represent the year best in one way or another. They help us make sense of the challenges 2020 has presented us with, understand the depths of the existing cracks it has exposed in our society, and offer solutions to solve the many truly monumental challenges we face—together. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

June 05, 2020

The Undocumented Americans

Book Review by Lauren Kohlenberg

Cornejo Villavicencio hands us a portrait of the continuous fight to exist in an America that thinks you are anything but American. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

Full Description

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST - One of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard reveals the hidden lives of her fellow undocumented Americans in this deeply personal and groundbreaking portrait of a nation.

"Karla's book sheds light on people's personal experiences and allows their stories to be told and their voices to be heard."--Selena Gomez FINALIST FOR THE NBCC JOHN LEONARD AWARD - NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, NPR, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, BOOK RIOT, LIBRARY JOURNAL, AND TIME

Writer Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was on DACA when she decided to write about being undocumented for the first time using her own name. It was right after the election of 2016, the day she realized the story she'd tried to steer clear of was the only one she wanted to tell. So she wrote her immigration lawyer's phone number on her hand in Sharpie and embarked on a trip across the country to tell the stories of her fellow undocumented immigrants--and to find the hidden key to her own. Looking beyond the flashpoints of the border or the activism of the DREAMers, Cornejo Villavicencio explores the lives of the undocumented--and the mysteries of her own life. She finds the singular, effervescent characters across the nation often reduced in the media to political pawns or nameless laborers. The stories she tells are not deferential or naively inspirational but show the love, magic, heartbreak, insanity, and vulgarity that infuse the day-to-day lives of her subjects. In New York, we meet the undocumented workers who were recruited into the federally funded Ground Zero cleanup after 9/11. In Miami, we enter the ubiquitous botanicas, which offer medicinal herbs and potions to those whose status blocks them from any other healthcare options. In Flint, Michigan, we learn of demands for state ID in order to receive life-saving clean water. In Connecticut, Cornejo Villavicencio, childless by choice, finds family in two teenage girls whose father is in sanctuary. And through it all we see the author grappling with the biggest questions of love, duty, family, and survival. In her incandescent, relentlessly probing voice, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio combines sensitive reporting and powerful personal narratives to bring to light remarkable stories of resilience, madness, and death. Through these stories we come to understand what it truly means to be a stray. An expendable. A hero. An American.

About the Author

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio has written about immigration, music, beauty, and mental illness for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Glamour, Elle, Vogue, n+1, and The New Inquiry, among others.

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