Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s 2020 book – The Undocumented Americans – has picked up a host of awards, including being a finalist for the National Book Awards. Here, we review this extraordinary and heart-wrenching work.Â
The Undocumented Americans is available for purchase here.
In a world where news is incredibly immediate and we have frequently seen the horror that is the reality of everyday life for many refugees and immigrants – the atrocities at the border between America and Mexico have been well documented – it is rare to actually hear the voices of those who are experiencing this fear on a daily basis. Enter Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s The Undocumented Americans, that puts the voices of undocumented Americans front and centre, showing the ‘real’ experience rather than the exceptional achievers who get into elite colleges and ultimately gain permanent citizenship (like Villavicencio herself who is a PHD candidate at Yale), focussing instead on those who are struggling on a daily basis and who live in a permanent state of instability. The book is immensely complex, showing the range of the human experience, evading a singular definition.
Resilience is the core theme that runs throughout Villavicencio’s depictions, from Salome who continues on after the death of her husband to cancer to the men evading deportation by seeking sanctuary in a local church and those undocumented workers continuing on despite the physical illnesses they face having been exposed to innumerable toxins while doing cleanup after 9/11. Where Villavicencio can not fully realise their stories – many have hidden their full stories through self-preservation – she imagines their final moments and conclusions, for instance of those who died during 9/11 when delivering coffee orders to white-collar employees at the World Trade Centre. Cornejo Villavicencio threads her own story throughout, including the fractures in her own parents marriage as a result of the stress of immigration and her own experience as an undocumented immigrant and the lingering emotions that she continues to feel toward her parents who left her in Ecuador for five years as a child.
‘The Undocumented Americans’ is an illuminating and important read for just about every demographic, both within America and without, holding a mirror up to prejudice and stereotypes, allowing an exploration of the inner psyche and range of experience of individuals who have been frequently confined to a narrow definition in the media. Cornejo Villavicencio’s writing is enigmatic, thoughtful and poignant and positions her as a writer who will grow and grow in importance in the years to come, offering a window and voice to those whose voices have been muffled for far too long.
