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

informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

 
Alright, seeing if I can maintain my 2025 resolution of more concise reviews... The book has been on my personal shelves, and thus TBR for a few years now. Look at me starting the new year with some backlist/shelf-clearing reads!

In this memoir in essays, Vargas opens up about his life as an undocumented person in the US, through little snippets that are scattered - as memories tend to be in real life - but by the end, leave the reader with a full portrait of his emotional, professional, interpersonal, political, and logistical experiences. I was struck by the many ways that pop culture (music and media) played a role in his understanding of and education about American life, in not only acculturation but also in grasping social and historical context in a real way. It was also particularly affecting to see how much time and stress (reasonably) went into worrying about documentation status - how limited is a life, internally and externally, in which that is always a central focus - what more could people achieve without these arbitrary rules setting boundaries and sapping emotional effort/strength. 

As he is a journalist by trade, the time he spends with language, talking about its importance and the role it plays in "othering," was fantastic. For someone whose family has chosen to live abroad for work, and would like to myself one day, it was particularly notable in the differences between "expat vs immigrant" or "settler vs refugee." When objectively, considered, the “inalienable instinct of human beings to move” is central to our species, and yet language has become a barrier to universally embracing that: when white migration happens it is celebrated as bravery, when POC do so, it’s denigrated and questioned legally...even though at the end of the day migration is a natural historical process. And really, as Vargas and so many others have pointed out, they are only here because we (the US/Western governments) have made their homes unsafe and unlivable through colonization and imperialism.

Finally, it is flabbergasting that at this point, he still has to explain that if it were possible to “fix” this issue of documentation, then he would have done it! We criticize and vilify those who don’t follow the “rules,” though we don’t understand and cannot name them ourselves. And yet, that changes when people are known, individually. Vargas points out multiple times how many people helped him along his way who never stopped to consider if it was “legal/lawful,” because it was the right thing to do for him as a human and a person and someone they knew and supported. If only we could make people see things that way for all immigrants, not just the ones they personally know, we could truly combat the fear-mongering narrative of the “other” that has taken over, and create a more accessible and inclusive system, benefiting us all. Because really, the cost of all that facade of enforcement and regulation and “protection” of our current policies/systems focusing on punitive actions (of which Vargas provides a succinct primer on here), is staggering. 

Vargas' breakdown of this memoir into sections - lying, passing, and hiding - as common threads in undocumented lives, using it to frame how that played out in his own experience as well, was really affecting. A fantastically written, very relatable (no matter who you are), memoir. 

For complementary reads, try The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencia and Solito by Javier Zamora.


“Separation not only divides families; separation buries emotion, buries it so far down you can’t touch it.”

“In the beginning, writing was only a way of passing as an American. I never expected it to be an identity. Above all else, I write to exist, to make myself visible.”

“I was too young to realize that the dream that Mama, Lolo, and Lola had for me was dictated by their own realities, by their own sense of limitations. The America they dreamed for me was not the America I was creating for myself.” (what a gorgeous phrasing of such a common, anecdotally as seen through my own reading, intergenerational immigrant reality)

“I had to interrogate how laws are created, how illegality must be seen through the prism of who is defining what is legal for whom. I had to realize that throughout American history, legality has forever been a construct of power.”

“...someone, somewhere, somehow created "the master narrative’ of illegality: human beings identified as 'illegals,' as if one's existence can be deemed unlawful.”


“There is no passing alone.”

“The reality is, the closet doesn't only hide you from strangers. The closet also hides you from the people you love.”


“Indescribable, the harm, all around.”

"Citizenship is showing up. Citizenship is using your voice while making sure you hear other people around you. Citizenship is how you live your life. Citizenship is resilience." 

"...immigration, at its core, is about families and love - the sacrifices of our families, and the love that we feel for a country we consider our home although it labels us 'aliens.'"

“Is this really about who has the right papers and what the laws are? Or is this about someone to control?”

“Dear America, is this really what you want?” 
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