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91
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
92/100Critics
91/100Scholars
91/100Author:
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Publisher:
One World
Date:
March 24, 2020
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.
What The Reviewers Say
...[a] captivating and evocative first book ...Villavicencio aims to tell 'the full story' of what it means to be undocumented in America, in all of its fraughtness and complexity, challenging the usual good and evil categories through a series of memoir-infused reported essays.
Cornejo Villavicencio is able to inhabit her subject in a way few who get to publish can. (She even turns her limitations into strengths: writing powerfully about the places she can’t go, the situations where she’s out of place, the people who won’t talk to her.).
Based on fieldwork from Ground Zero to Miami, solidly researched and footnoted, this chronicle is framed by [Villavicencio's] 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.
...a profoundly intimate portrayal of the undocumented immigrant experience in America.
