This book is for every American who is willing to more deeply explore the issue of immigration in America.
Jose Antonio Vargas, born in the Philippines, was 12 years old in 1993 when his mother put him on a plane with a stranger and sent him to America. He did not know he was an "undocumented immigrant" until he was in high school. His grandparents expected him to work under-the-table jobs until he could marry a U.S. citizen, not knowing the impossibility of this plan due to Vargas being gay (and gay marriage not yet being legal in the United States). He was already a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist when he "came out" as undocumented in an essay published in The New York Times Magazine. This book is mostly a memoir of experiences and relationships framed in the context of Vargas's immigration status. As the book progresses, it dives deeper into the history, policies, facts, and data related to immigration. But in the end, the book isn't so much about "the immigration issue" as it is about Vargas's own personal struggle to live as an undocumented immigrant. His entire life has been a conscious conflict of questioning himself, his identity, the country he calls home, the meaning of citizenship. Even as he built a successful career and paid taxes, he lived with a constant fear of being found out. Ultimately, this book reminds you that each undocumented immigrant in the news is a person. Jose Antonio Vargas is a person. This book is about the humanity of how the state of immigration policies in America affects real people.
Of course, any discussion of immigration inevitably involves race and nationalism. Vargas talks about how Asians and Latinos and Native Americans are left out of the black versus white binary that is most dominant in discussions of race in America, but also how he was influenced by black writers. He writes, "Black writers gave me permission to question America. Black writers challenged me to find my place here and created a space for me to claim." (p. 78) He examines the "master narrative" - a concept he learned from Toni Morrison - and how "[w]hen white people move [across countries]...it's seen as courageous and necessary, celebrated in history books. Yet when people of color move, legally or illegally, the migration itself is subjected to question of legality." (p. 140-141). Even his name is evidence of that narrative: "After the Americans forced the Spanish out of the Philippines, their typewriters couldn't type accented vowels. My name is Jose because of Spanish colonialism. But Jose isn't José because of American imperialism." (p. 224)
The entire book was a compelling read, but what I found particularly fascinating was his account of how his life changed after he was thrown into the spotlight because of his "coming out" article. Specifically, while it was not surprising that he received a lot of hate from those on the right of the political spectrum, I did not expect him to receive so much backlash from those on the left as well, who accused him of all kinds of ulterior motives and self-serving interests.
In closing, I'll give a shout-out to the podcast They Call Us Bruce and the episode in which they talk with Jose Antonio Vargas about this book. Though I had heard of Vargas and had put this book on my to-read list, hearing this podcast really piqued my interest and made me push the book to the top of my list. If you're on the fence about whether or not to read Dear America, give the podcast a listen at http://theycallusbruce.libsyn.com/episode-49-they-call-us-jose-antonio-vargas.
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