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The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

16 reviews

moon_peach's review

emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

5.0

Villavicencio combines her own experiences as an immigrant and child of immigrants and those of the people she interviews. She does not consider herself a journalist because every part of her wants to be involved and help as much as possible. In her we see how traumatizing being an immigrant is, she is a Harvard grad with a PHD but still has a slew of mental illnesses, some of which were caused by her own parents' mental illnesses.

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annamay1021's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

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avery_lehman54's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative reflective sad fast-paced

4.5

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bookgurlie's review

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adventurous challenging emotional informative medium-paced

4.0

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emmehooks's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

4.5

This book is not for the white allies hoping for a feel good story. This book is about the harsh, painful, racist truth of being undocumented in America and the ways the American “justice” system tears people and communities apart.

This book is a mix of deeply personal fears and experiences, narrative reporting, and community building as a radical act of self-preservation and existence.

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savvylit's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is an undocumented American herself. Thus she is intimately familiar with the fear-informed ways in which undocumented people approach every aspect of life in the United States. After Trump's election in 2016, she set out to interview a wide variety of undocumented people across the country. This book is a result of that project and serves as an unforgettable testimony to the lives of undocumented Latinx people.

One aspect that is discussed thoroughly in this book is the exploitation of undocumented workers by their so-called employers. In her chapter on Ground Zero, for instance, Villavicencio discusses the fact that many of the first responders on September 11th were undocumented. She gets to know a group of folks who were instrumental in the debris cleanup at Ground Zero. All of them now experience financially and physically devastating chronic diseases as a result of the harsh chemicals & carcinogens they were exposed to on the (underpaid) job.

Another key topic that Villavicencio explores is the myriad ways that being undocumented affects mental health. For example, she becomes deeply involved in the lives of families whose fathers are on the brink of deportation but have taken sanctuary in local churches. Though the children are still able to see their father, they struggle with the fact that they're forced to live apart. Some of the children she gets to know even begin to dissociate as they struggle to process their new, fraught realities.

This book isn't entirely about untold suffering and exploitation, however. It is also about solidarity, hope, radical joy, and the myriad ways that the undocumented support each other. And Villavicencio bears witness to it all - with passion, rage, and deep understanding.

I truly believe that The Undocumented Americans should be required reading for all who identify as American.

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