The Undocumented Americans

February 10, 2020
Journalist Villavicencio draws on her background as an undocumented immigrant and Harvard University graduate to deliver a profoundly intimate portrayal of the undocumented immigrant experience in America. She speaks with Latin American workers who lack documentation to prove they helped to clean up Ground Zero, and therefore cannot get compensation for their health issues; women in Florida who share medications with each other and rely on clandestine pharmacies and botanicas for their health care; immigrants affected by the Flint, Mich., water crisis in “disturbingly specific” ways; families struggling in the aftermath of a parent’s deportation; and undocumented people living in a church sanctuary in New Haven, Conn. Villavicencio interweaves her own story with these accounts, reflecting on her relationship with her aging parents and their decision to leave her behind in Ecuador for several years as they worked to pay off debts and save enough money to bring her to the U.S. She portrays her subjects’ pain with messy familiarity rather than pathos, yielding profiles that are both exceptional and emblematic. Though she writes that she’d “honestly rather die than be expected to change the mind of a xenophobe,” Villavicencio’s highly personal and deeply empathetic perspective serves as a powerful rebuttal to characterizations of undocumented immigrants as criminals and welfare cheats. Readers will be deeply moved by this incandescent account. (May)Correction: The author's name was misspelled in an earlier version of this review.

February 15, 2020
The debut book from "one of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard." In addition to delivering memorable portraits of undocumented immigrants residing precariously on Staten Island and in Miami, Cleveland, Flint, and New Haven, Cornejo Villavicencio, now enrolled in the American Studies doctorate program at Yale, shares her own Ecuadorian family story (she came to the U.S. at age 5) and her anger at the exploitation of hardworking immigrants in the U.S. Because the author fully comprehends the perils of undocumented immigrants speaking to journalist, she wisely built trust slowly with her subjects. Her own undocumented status helped the cause, as did her Spanish fluency. Still, she protects those who talked to her by changing their names and other personal information. Consequently, readers must trust implicitly that the author doesn't invent or embellish. But as she notes, "this book is not a traditional nonfiction book....I took notes by hand during interviews and after the book was finished, I destroyed those notes." Recounting her travels to the sites where undocumented women, men, and children struggle to live above the poverty line, she reports her findings in compelling, often heart-wrenching vignettes. Cornejo Villavicencio clearly shows how employers often cheat day laborers out of hard-earned wages, and policymakers and law enforcement agents exist primarily to harm rather than assist immigrants who look and speak differently. Often, cruelty arrives not only in economic terms, but also via verbal slurs and even violence. Throughout the narrative, the author explores her own psychological struggles, including her relationships with her parents, who are considered "illegal" in the nation where they have worked hard and tried to become model residents. In some of the most deeply revealing passages, Cornejo Villavicencio chronicles her struggles reconciling her desire to help undocumented children with the knowledge that she does not want "kids of my own." Ultimately, the author's candor about herself removes worries about the credibility of her stories. A welcome addition to the literature on immigration told by an author who understands the issue like few others.

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April 1, 2020

In this debut, Cornejo Villavicencio writes of forgotten family traumas, through and around profiles of undocumented persons. She enters communities in Miami, Flint, Staten Island, and more, and examines structural challenges that people without papers experience, including access to health care. These well-rendered journalistic vignettes evoke her sources more like characters or friends. The account is straightforward about what it is like to exist as an immigrant in today's political climate. Cornejo Villavicencio does not mince words, repeatedly calling policies and actions racist, violent, and exploitative. She also touches on the subject of child separation at the Southern border and what such early crises do to human minds. For Cornejo Villavicencio and many in her community, traditional relationships and caretaking arrangements are altered by necessity. She writes, "At some point, your parents become your children, and your own personal American dream becomes making sure they age and die with dignity in a country that has never wanted them." VERDICT Readers come to see that there is no time for hedging: the personal traumas discussed in the book are compounded by their commonality. A must-read indictment on what it means to be undocumented and what it means to be American.--Sierra Dickey, Ctr. for New Americans, Northampton, MA

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Starred review from March 15, 2020
Cornejo Villavicencio is an undocumented American, Harvard graduate, Yale doctoral candidate, and journalist who has written for the New York Times, the New Republic, and the Daily Beast. She is a DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipient born in Ecuador whose book shines as true testimonio (a classic Latin American genre combining fiction and nonfiction). Based on fieldwork from Ground Zero to Miami, solidly researched and footnoted, this chronicle is framed by her own family's experience with immigration and the relationships that blossomed between her and her similarly undocumented subjects. This valuable and authentic inquiry is powerfully embellished with magical imaginings, as when she envisions a man drowning during Hurricane Sandy's last moments. Cornejo Villavicencio's unfiltered and vulnerable voice incorporates both explosive profanity and elegiac incantations of despair, as, for example, when she internalizes the hatred toward brown people manifest in the poisoning of Flint, MIchigan's water supply. She gives of herself unstintingly as she speaks with undocumented day laborers, older people working long past retirement age, and a housekeeper who relies on the botanica and voodoo for health care. Cornejo Villavicencio's challenging and moving testimonio belongs in all collections.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)