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Claire Harris
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THE UNDOCUMENTED AMERICANS

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

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.
Traveling across the country, journalist Karla Cornejo Villavicencio risked arrest at every turn to report the extraordinary stories of her fellow undocumented Americans. Her subjects have every reason to be wary around reporters, but Cornejo Villavicencio has unmatched access to their stories. Her work culminates in a stunning, essential read for our times.

Born in Ecuador and brought to the United States when she was five years old, Cornejo Villavicencio has lived the American Dream. Raised on her father's deliveryman income, she later became one of the first undocumented students admitted into Harvard. She is now a doctoral candidate at Yale University and has written for The New York Times. She weaves her own story among those of the eleven million undocumented who have been thrust into the national conversation today as never before.

Looking well beyond the flashpoints of the border or the activism of the DREAMERS, Cornejo Villavicencio explores the lives of the undocumented as rarely seen in our daily headlines. In New York we meet the undocumented workers who were recruited in the federally funded Ground Zero cleanup after 9/11. In Miami we enter the hidden botanicas, which offer witchcraft and homeopathy to those whose status blocks them from any other healthcare options. In Flint, Michigan, we witness how many live in fear as the government issues raids at grocery stores and demands identification before offering life-saving clean water.

The Undocumented Americans powerfully reveals the hidden corners of our nation of immigrants. Karla Cornejo Villavicencio brings to light remarkable stories of hope and resilience, and through them we come to understand what it truly means to be American.
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Published 2020-03-24 by Spiegel & Grau

Comments

I was delighted to speak to Karla Cornejo Villavicencio by email about empathy, humanizing the political, emotional and mental health for migrant bodies, immigrant feminism, and more. ... Read more...

Author's article: I Don't Have Children, But I'm Still a Mom - Kind Of... Read more...

'A Hunger for Survival': Karla Cornejo Villavicencio On Her New Book The Undocumented Americans Read more...

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. Read more...

Interview with Karla Cornejo Villavicencio and her "provocative and compassionate memoir"... Read more...

...brilliant, vivid, tender, furious work ... I read it in gulps, late at night. I couldn't stop, because I was meeting so many funny, philosophical, courageous and intriguing people, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio included. I hope you read this book! Read more...

The best books of the week: A wide-ranging exploration of the lives of undocumented immigrants, written by a woman who is one of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard. This book brings their stories to life. Read more...

Karla's words will always stay with me. She has the ability to tell the story of undocumented immigrants with such honesty, empathy, understanding and sensitivity. Her book sheds light on people's personal experiences and allows their stories to be told and their voices to be heard. I hope every child of immigrants has this book to guide them through these hard times.

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is gifting the world her book, The Undocumented Americans, on March 24, 2020. I had a chance to ask her questions that she turned into poetry in the answers below. These answers provide a glimpse into what you can expect from this book... Read more...

Author's article: Undocumented And Unpaid: How Domestic Workers Are Risking Their Lives In The Pandemic Read more...

"I ASKED THEM TO SEND ME FLOWERS": A CONVERSATION WITH KARLA CORNEJO VILLAVICENCIO Read more...

...book shines as true testimonio... valuable and authentic inquiry... Cornejo Villavicencio's challenging and moving testimonio belongs in all collections. Read more...

...The book reads like a thriller, less in the sense of being entertaining (though it is) than in its capacity to exact an elevated-pulse-and-pounding-heart reaction. Villavicencio has the kind of black humor that will either make you fling the book across the room or clutch it to your chest. I clutched. Read more...

article about the forthcoming Showtime series called Hombre, created by Jonás Cuarón and starring Gael Garcia Bernal, which is based on THE UNDOCUMENTED AMERICANS Read more...

The book is listed on New York Magazine's Approval Matrix Read more...

Piece in The New York Times, featured on the front page of Arts in the print edition: I Came From Nothing Read more...

THE UNDOCUMENTED AMERICANS has been shortlisted for the National Book Award! Read more...

A welcome addition to the literature on immigration told by an author who understands the issue like few others. Read more...

I'd read books on immigrants that I hated. They seemed to elicit pity, guilt or inspiration, or fixate on the migrant body as a laboring body - calloused hands, swollen feet, an innate connection to the land. That didn't sit right with me. I wanted to write about us as people first... Read more...

Villavicencio's first book is as relative and harrowing as it is urgent for our times, yet lingers timelessly after its final page. I was utterly totaled by the countless stories of undocumented heroes and heroines who forfeited their lives for a country that denied them citizenship and was made anew by Karla's tenacious journey to give her people - our people - a proper burial with a song in a language that is entirely their own. Read more...