E72: The Cost of Being Undocumented: A Conversation with Alix Dick & Antero Garcia

✊🏽 About Our Guests

Alix Dick is an artist and storyteller living in Los Angeles. Her contributions as a producer and filmmaker have screened at film festivals across the globe. She co-edits the substack, La Cuenta, an online publication centering the voices and perspectives of individuals labeled undocumented in the US.

Antero Garcia is a professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University and president-elect of the National Council of Teachers of English. He has authored or edited more than two dozen books about schooling in America. He co-edits the substack, La Cuenta.

🎧 Episode Summary

In this powerful episode, Bruce Reyes-Chow speaks with Alix Dick and Antero Garcia, the folks behind The Cost of Being Undocumented: One Woman’s Reckoning with America's Inhumane Math. The book explores the emotional, financial, and systemic burdens placed on undocumented immigrants—and the human stories that make those costs real.

Bruce, Alix, and Antero dig into:

📚 The origin story behind their collaborative nonfiction project

💵 The hidden costs undocumented immigrants face in education, healthcare, housing, and safety

🧮 Why “inhumane math” is more than just a metaphor

💡 How storytelling and data can work together to inspire change

👩🏽‍🏫 Antero’s personal lens as an educator and writer

🧠 Alix’s process of transforming pain and policy into a compelling narrative

It’s a heartfelt and thoughtful conversation about justice, narrative power, and reclaiming humanity in dehumanizing systems.

🔗 Episode Links & Resources

📘 The Cost of Being Undocumented: One Woman's Reckoning with America's Inhumane Math

🧑🏽‍💻 Alix Dick on Instagram

🧑🏽‍🏫 Antero Garcia at Stanford

💌 Subscribe to the La Cuenta Newsletter on Substack

🎤And the singer that Alix mentioned, Debbie Dawson is at: www.debbiidawson.com

🎧 The Amalgamation Podcast

Be sure to subscribe to, rate, and review The Amalgamation Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.

The Amalgamation Podcast Team: Emmie Hix (Producer), Dessiree McFarland (Editor), Merisssa Magdael-Lauron (Music)

🎙️ Your Host, Bruce Reyes-Chow

Bruce Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow is a 3rd Generation Filipino/Chinese American and an active speaker, writer, and coachsultant on topics of faith, leadership, activism, culture, race, and technology. An ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), he is the author of six books, most recently Everything Good about God is True: Choosing Faith. He and his wife live in San Jose, CA, with too many animals and houseplants.

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