The stories she tells are not deferential or naively inspirational but show the love, magic, heartbreak, insanity, and vulgarity that infuse the day-to-day lives of her subjects. She finds the nation of singular, effervescent characters often reduced in the media to political pawns or nameless laborers. Looking beyond the flashpoints of the border or the activism of the DREAMers, Cornejo Villavicencio explores the lives of the undocumented-and the mysteries of her own life. So she wrote her immigration lawyer's phone number on her hand in Sharpie and embarked on a trip across the country to tell the stories of her fellow undocumented immigrants-and to find the hidden key to her own. It was right after the election of 2016, the day she realized the story she'd tried to steer clear of was the only one she wanted to tell. Writer Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was on DACA when she decided to write about being undocumented for the first time using her own name. One of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard reveals the hidden lives of her fellow undocumented Americans in this deeply personal and groundbreaking portrait of a nation.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |