More and more it feels like there is no other book to read in this moment than Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s The Undocumented Americans. Her voice is the voice to listen to in the present, as cities slowly, then rapidly, empty of their residents. Her voice is for the future, a voice we’ve absolutely needed in the past. It feels like there is no other book besides this one and, as magnified as the statement may be, it doesn’t make the sentiment of it any less true. We can skip straight to the urgency of this book, an urgency of many years. But maybe for some of us, it's a newfound urgency, a timely urgency, a humanizing urgency, an emotionally thrilling urgency, and in that case any reader will surely recognize and appreciate the integrity of this book.
Cover image from Penguin Random House website.
Villavicencio is a writer and one of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard, having arrived to New York City from Ecuador when she was five. In the book’s introduction, she says that she decided to write this nonfiction mix of memoir and reporting because she thought she "could write something better, something that rang true to me and people I knew and loved. And I thought that I was the best person to do it." She's right and she did. She made this decision the day after the 2016 election.
In six chapters, Villavicencio researches and reports on the lives of undocumented people in the United States, from different walks of life, in similar circumstances. She felt the safest traveling to and conducting interviews in New York, Miami, Flint, Cleveland, and New Haven, research inextricable from her and her family's experiences. One of the most remarkable things about this book is its reporting alongside her life, the throwing away of the "objective" journalistic approach. While reading the work, letting the walls down and investing yourself alongside her are unavoidable. This book is uncompromising in that way. There is no distance anymore, hardly even an arms-length. For what?
To be up close means to learn and understand what migrant workers had to do at Ground Zero. The federally funded clean-up crew included undocumented migrants who went on to suffer life-threatening diseases, trauma, and mental illnesses. In the water crisis of Flint, the undocumented are unable to access clean water without a government-issued ID. Undocumented people are often barred from obtaining healthcare, instead having to turn to botanical alternatives. And to bring us closer yet: right now there is no escaping the grim reality undocumented people face amid this global pandemic. There is no security for them. Wages are lost as a result of businesses closing down and subsequent layoffs; families deciding they don’t need housekeeping and childcare services as parents find themselves at home with their children. Undocumented migrants are also at the frontline of exposure, holding some of the most essential roles in the nation. Their positions are made so much more precarious because of their status. ICE has arrested immigrants in hospitals and grocery stores.
The Undocumented Americans is a book dedicated to its subject, showing the reader the cost of resilience in addition to resilience itself; the fierce sincerity of Villavicencio's motives; her sense of humor and its tenderness; the love on every page. During the most uncertain moments of late, the spirit of this book stays with the reader, felt in the momentary independence of a car full of undocumented women en route to a Miami casino before Villavicencio reminds them she has an early flight, the spirit of a car full of chingonas rerouting to a bar. This book is one to own, out March 24th from One World.
Andrea Morales is a daughter of Guatemalan immigrants and from Los Angeles. She graduated from the University of Southern California with a B.A. in English Literature and a minor in Psychology. She now works at Macmillan Publishers as a Junior Contracts Associate for the adult trade division. Her book reviews and recommendations can be found on Instagram at @nastymuchachitareads and she lurks on Twitter as @nastymuchachita.
