The Undocumented Americans - Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio writes in this honest, conversational, sometimes funny, sometimes dark, tone that immediately draws you into her book, and takes you on her journey. The Undocumented Americans is her story of travelling around the US and collecting stories from undocumented immigrants in different communities. But it is also her story of self-discovery, of understanding her parents and their choices, and I loved how intertwined these stories are in the book, how intertwined all of our stories were.
Back in 2016 I also started to collect what I called “Immigration Stories” asking friends and friends of friends to either write them for me, or to let me write them for them, letting them use their own names, pseudonyms, or remain anonymous. Basically for the same reasons that the author describes in her book: to give voices to those of us so often vilified by those in power. We are all human, equal, no matter where we come from and where we are going to. And also because there is often either an emphasis on immigrants who are exceptional, and/or emphasis on those who commit crimes, but never enough on every day people who are working hard to get by. When I set about asking people for stories it was interesting for me to see that those who did respond were those with the most to lose, while those who were too afraid (even if they remained anonymous) were the ones who didn’t really have anything to worry about.
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio came to the US as a child and has her own experience as living undocumented in the US. She seems to have a wonderful ability of getting people to let their guard down and tell their stories. Day laborers in Staten Island, workers who were part of both the 9/11 clean-up and the Hurricane Sandy clean-up, workers who are suffering the same issues that firefighters who were there suffer(ed) from, but whose stories we don’t hear about. Immigrants in Flint, MI, where obtaining clean water was a battle without State ID, and where the damage the water caused is still unknown. Immigrants living in Miami where illnesses are treated via botanicas, because they are denied other healthcare options due to their immigration status and/or inability to pay thousands for healthcare. There are also important stories of children growing up without a parent due to the parent’s deportation, and stories of living in the sanctuary of a church while waiting for immigration courts to grant a stay. And so many more stories, lives that we must all read about, ordinary lives of people tasked to do the extraordinary just to get by. The loneliness, the sadness, the depression, but also the happy moments, the incredible times.
I love how the author writes, how she never glosses over a topic just to make the reader feel better. This is one of those books that I think everyone must read, especially if you are not an immigrant or a child of an immigrant (although there is a lot that my partner and I both related to in this book, and it made us feel seen, so immigrants and children of immigrants will also benefit from reading it). Thank you Karla Cornejo Villavicencio for your work and your writing, this book has my heart.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.