mood_reading_maya 's review for:

Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas

5.0

challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

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Vargas relates his experience immigrating to the United States at age 12 from the Philippines. (Side note: were you also thinking this was going to be about the immigrant experience from Latin America? Yeah, that was me too. Spanish colonization is far reaching my friends!) In Dear America, he speaks with vulnerability and honesty about his fears, frustrations, challenges, and vacillations between his desires for visibility and acceptance and the impact of having to live in the shadows for so long. Vargas’ professional experience as a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter shines through here. Not only does he tell his own story, but he lays bare the immense challenges of navigating the immigration system in the US. He has no qualms about calling attention to how US based mainstream media newsrooms are so white and privileged that they lack the insight and language to adequately combat the right’s false political narratives surrounding immigration. Vargas brings facts and statistics to the table alongside a deeply emotional and evocative call for Americans to open their eyes to the harm its current system perpetuates. Citizenship is so much more than just about where you were born.