The Undocumented Americans

By: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

Narrated by: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • 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.

“Karla’s book sheds light on people’s personal experiences and allows their stories to be told and their voices to be heard.”—Selena Gomez

FINALIST FOR THE NBCC JOHN LEONARD AWARD • NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, NPR, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, BOOK RIOT, LIBRARY JOURNAL, AND TIME

Writer Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was on DACA when she decided to write about being undocumented for the first time using her own name. It was right after the election of 2016, the day she realized the story she’d tried to steer clear of was the only one she wanted to tell. So she wrote her immigration lawyer’s phone number on her hand in Sharpie and embarked on a trip across the country to tell the stories of her fellow undocumented immigrants—and to find the hidden key to her own.

Looking beyond the flashpoints of the border or the activism of the DREAMers, Cornejo Villavicencio explores the lives of the undocumented—and the mysteries of her own life. She finds the singular, effervescent characters across the nation often reduced in the media to political pawns or nameless laborers. The stories she tells are not deferential or naively inspirational but show the love, magic, heartbreak, insanity, and vulgarity that infuse the day-to-day lives of her subjects.

In New York, we meet the undocumented workers who were recruited into the federally funded Ground Zero cleanup after 9/11. In Miami, we enter the ubiquitous botanicas, which offer medicinal herbs and potions to those whose status blocks them from any other healthcare options. In Flint, Michigan, we learn of demands for state ID in order to receive life-saving clean water. In Connecticut, Cornejo Villavicencio, childless by choice, finds family in two teenage girls whose father is in sanctuary. And through it all we see the author grappling with the biggest questions of love, duty, family, and survival.

In her incandescent, relentlessly probing voice, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio combines sensitive reporting and powerful personal narratives to bring to light remarkable stories of resilience, madness, and death. Through these stories we come to understand what it truly means to be a stray. An expendable. A hero. An American.

Critic reviews

“Punk and dazzling and remarkably human . . . like watching firecrackers go off.”—Jia Tolentino

“Brilliant, vivid, tender, furious.”—Louise Erdrich

“A scream and a song . . . a complex, human look at the fabric of this nation.”—Quiara Alegría Hudes

“In her captivating and evocative first book, The Undocumented Americans, [Karla] Cornejo 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. In doing so, she reveals how her subjects, including her own family members, struggle with vices like adultery and self-harm, even while doing backbreaking, demeaning work to support their families. . . . Cornejo Villavicencio reveals a fullness of character that feels subversive, simply because of how rare it is.”—The New York Times Book Review

“There’s nothing to do but sit down and read this book. Inside it, I feel deep in being, immersed in a frankness and a swerving bright and revelatory funkiness I have not encountered ever before concerning the collective daily life of an undocumented family in America. It is a radical human story and Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is a great writer.”—Eileen Myles

“Karla Cornejo Villavicencio offers an un inching indictment of
our current immigration system. This is the book we’ve been waiting for.”—Roberto G. Gonzales, author of Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America

“Profoundly intimate . . . Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s highly personal and deeply empathetic perspective serves as a powerful rebuttal
to characterizations of undocumented immigrants as criminals and welfare cheats.”—Publishers Weekly

“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.”—Booklist (starred review)

“Memorable . . . compelling . . . heartwrenching . . . a welcome addition to the literature on immigration told by an author who understands the issue like few others.”—Kirkus Reviews

poignant and impossible to forget

it all hit hard. incredible writing, powerful reflections. I took notes. you should too.

The real deal

Moving, inspiring, catalyzing. This book, it's story, emboldened my activist work on matters of immigration.

Outstanding work of nonfiction

I don't think I've ever read any nonfiction book as vulnerable and raw as this one. I highly recommend it.

Excellent Read

The writing in this book is phenomenal! I also love that it’s read by the author!

So much yes

Reminds me of my mom an how I feel about the struggles of this “dream”

Must Read for Anyone with Immigrant Parents

I felt the stories deeply and relatable for myself or the people I loved. I have never read something this raw about how living in the margins of society can be detrimental to your mental and physical health. I hope everyone reads this because it’s a small and mighty book of essays. I used it for a book club of a very diverse audience and everyone learned and empathy with everyone.

Raw, heartbreaking - we can do better by others

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was featured on This American Life on NPR 04/10/2020, she read an excerpt of this gripping account of her life and it was absolutely heartbreaking and raw. It hurt my heart that someone right here in the USA, right this minute is being treated like garbage, less than. Its disgusting and we are not doing enough. This is not the ideal I was serving during my time in the military. We can do more. We must do more. No one is more entitled to this place than anyone else, all humans have the same birthright.

We all need to hear this…

By far, the most intimate, unfiltered reality told in words that are beautiful, gut wrenching and authentic. I am better equipped to understand and do the work that this book has called into action in my own life. Ignorance can only be bliss up to the point of the reveal. This book is a revelation. Thank you for sharing your gift, experience and research. We can not heal or begin to help what we do not know, please keep sharing.

Everyone should read this!

Such a powerful book. You cannot unsee the truth after reading it. The issues or rather stories in the book affects us all.

Beautiful and devastating

Everyone should read this book. It’s beautifully written, deeply haunting , and even funny at times. Highly recommend.