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atxmarisol 's review for:
Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen
by Jose Antonio Vargas
emotional
informative
fast-paced
As a Chicana who lives in a border state, I found this book to be very interesting because it was told from the perspective of an undocumented person who isn't from Latin or Central America. It's quite easy to forget that this struggle to live here in the U.S. without legal status exists among a diverse group of people from all over the world. Vargas does a good job of telling his story and one that hopefully allows people to empathize with him.
The reason I docked a point is because his story sometimes seems a bit impersonal at times, perhaps because he himself admits that he doesn't get close to people because of his impermanent status here in the USA. I feel like he doesn't spend much time exploring the struggles his mother and grandparents made to bring him here and sometimes it seems like I'm reading a list of his many accomplishments. He mentions the educated, well off white people who helped him, and his Define American partners, but it would have been nice to hear more about the diverse people he encountered along the way. When he does sometimes mention these people, it's to tell about how they didn't identify with him as much, whether it's his grandparents when he came out as gay, a Hispanic border patrol who annoyed him with all the questions, the heckler he mentioned from Latin America or his friend who emailed him about pulling a stunt. A counterpoint of more diverse people who have worked towards the same goal as Vargas to highlight undocumented people here would have made this a five star book for me.
The reason I docked a point is because his story sometimes seems a bit impersonal at times, perhaps because he himself admits that he doesn't get close to people because of his impermanent status here in the USA. I feel like he doesn't spend much time exploring the struggles his mother and grandparents made to bring him here and sometimes it seems like I'm reading a list of his many accomplishments. He mentions the educated, well off white people who helped him, and his Define American partners, but it would have been nice to hear more about the diverse people he encountered along the way. When he does sometimes mention these people, it's to tell about how they didn't identify with him as much, whether it's his grandparents when he came out as gay, a Hispanic border patrol who annoyed him with all the questions, the heckler he mentioned from Latin America or his friend who emailed him about pulling a stunt. A counterpoint of more diverse people who have worked towards the same goal as Vargas to highlight undocumented people here would have made this a five star book for me.