An only child of a single mother - his father abandoned the family early on - Vargas describes himself as a mama’s boy whose poverty required them to share a bed in a tiny apartment. It begins with Vargas’s childhood in the Philippines. The book is divided into three parts, titled “Lying,” “Passing,” and “Hiding,” all of which capture different stages of Vargas’s life as an undocumented immigrant. Styled in the manner of James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son, the book consists of short, accessible essays in which Vargas reveals the life experiences that led to his current status as a stateless statesman, a man Bill O’Reilly terms, “The most famous illegal in America.” Part memoir and part current events, history lesson, immigration primer, and cultural mirror, the book reveals the emotionally devastating toll that current immigration policies take on individuals who, often because of their parents’ decisions, find themselves without legal status in the United States. It is tangible proof that he exists and is free to voice his opinions, despite the state’s prerogative to expel him from the country. But it isn’t simply a young writer’s excitement at seeing his name in print for the first time his byline is a powerful metaphor, representing an undocumented man’s struggle to be seen. EARLY IN Jose Antonio Vargas’s moving new book, Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, he reveals the thrill of seeing his byline on his first article for his high school newspaper.
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