‘Dear America’ a mournful, personal look at immigration
Jose Antonio Vargas considers his name in “Dear America, Notes of an Undocumented Citizen.” From that name, one might make a generalization about where Vargas is from and how he got to the United States. But a quick look at the book’s cover reveals no accent mark over the “e.”
Vargas describes his name as existing at the intersection of colonialism and imperialism, referring to the complicated history of the Philippines, where he was born. His grandparents immigrated to the United States, but various complications kept his mother out. When he was 12, she sent Vargas with a smuggler — he was told it was an “uncle” — to live with his grandparents in California.
“Researching the Philippines and its history, I understood better how much bigger history is than any of us,” he says. “Yet it’s so personal.”
Vargas, who will appear Monday night at Talento Bilingüe de Houston, had no idea he lacked proper documentation. And his arrival here left him without a path to citizenship. Yet 25 years have passed since then.
During that time, a teenage Vargas found out his green card was counterfeit. He dealt with a supportive grandparent and one who kicked him out of the house when he came out as gay. A few years later he won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the Virginia Tech University shooting. He became one of the faces of the DREAM Act, only to be denied its deferred action protection because he was a year too old. And he spoke before the Senate Judiciary Committee, during which he challenged the government with a question: “What do you want to do with me?”
That appearance could be seen as the fulcrum of Vargas’ book. Before the Senate committee, he is questioned by Jeff Sessions, then a U.S. Senator and now the United States attorney general.
“Mr. Vargas,” Sessions said, “would you agree fundamentally that a great nation should have an immigration policy and then create a legal system that carries that policy out and then enforces that policy?”
Vargas answered in the affirmative. And “Notes” further suggests he still agrees with Sessions. He just thinks the current policy has created an international nightmare affecting millions of people and needs revision.
“People are surprised the book isn’t about Trump,” Vargas says. “They’re taken aback by the tone of the book. They expected an angrier tone.
“But I’d rather talk about solving problems and having conversations.”
Vargas divides the book into three sections: “Lying” largely covers his youth, as he finds out how he got to the States. “Passing” finds him melding into a culture. And “Hiding” is provocatively named because Vargas isn’t just hiding in plain sight: He’s become a quite visible activist for immigration issues and immigration reform, most recently founding and serving as the CEO of the nonprofit Define American.
“This is a cultural thing,” he says. “People think it’s about partisan politics. It’s way deeper than that. It’s a band-aid when you need radiation and chemo at the same time. It’s about needing to have an honest conversation about a country addicted to cheap labor. The problems are far bigger than just trying to get rid of some people.
“That’s the thrust of our work at Define American. To start a cultural conversation.”
Vargas shifts between the personal and the international in the book, what he calls “the micro and the macro of concerns that have enormous emotional cost but also a larger issue of severance between the self and a government. This feels like a fragile time for all of this, but at the same time you want to make sure you’re clearly defining terms.”
Vargas took an efficient approach to his narrative, spreading 40 brisk chapters across 230 pages. At times, they feel a little like snapshots or poems, moments that prompted emotional reflection on the part of the author. Sometimes they’re hopeful. Often they’re not.
“I wanted to avoid didactic lecturing,” he says. “I wanted the language itself to be part of these large questions. And maybe that’s why the tone is mournful. I just read it out loud to record it for Audible. It wasn’t until I read it out loud that I realized how mournful the book is.”