The Undocumented Americans

“By this point, I had been pursuing a PhD at Yale because I needed the health insurance and had read lots of books about migrants and I hated a good number of the texts. I couldn’t see my family in them, because I saw my parents as more than laborers, as more than sufferers or dreamers. I thought I could write something better, something that rang true.” 

This is the author’s stated purpose for writing the book: It is a corrective to the general narrative on undocumented immigrants that depicts them in distorted and oversimplified ways rather than in their full and complex humanity. The author occupies a rare position as a highly educated writer with degrees from some of the most prestigious American universities who also has a personal history of life as an undocumented immigrant and connections to others in those communities. That perspective is what allows the author to write an analysis that also “rings true” for the people about whom the book was written.

“This book will move you to be punk, when you need to be punk; y hermanxs, it’s time to fuck some shit up.” 

Villavicencio often writes with colloquialisms and profanity, which contributes to the book’s blunt-reality tone. This exhortation is largely for members of the book’s audience who will see themselves reflected in its pages. The image of punk culture and the call to “fuck some shit up” represents the freedom that comes from honesty in the face of oppression as well as from the exercise of using one’s voice in a society that attempts to silence that voice. The quote also contains untranslated Spanish.