Olivia: Most journalism about immigrants focuses on two stories: the saintly, high-achieving 'DREAMer' or the suffering victim. But what if the most honest stories are about the randoms, the ghosts, the people who are just trying to get by? Jackson: Right, the people who aren't perfect poster children for a political cause. What if the real story is messy, angry, and complicated? Olivia: Exactly. And that’s the territory we’re exploring today with the book The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio. This isn't just another book about immigration; it's a Molotov cocktail thrown at the whole genre. Jackson: I'm intrigued already. What makes her perspective so different? Olivia: Well, for starters, her credentials are as unconventional as they are impressive. Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was one of the first undocumented students to graduate from Harvard. She wrote this book, which became a National Book Award finalist, in the wake of the 2016 election, driven by this fierce urgency to tell the stories that were being completely ignored. Jackson: A Harvard grad who was undocumented? That alone shatters the stereotypes. So how does she approach telling these stories differently? It sounds like she has a personal stake in this that most journalists just don't. Olivia: That’s the entire point. She argues that the traditional, detached journalistic approach has failed these communities. She believes it often ends up stripping them of their voice and humanity. So, she throws out the rulebook.

Jackson: Throws out the rulebook how? What does that look like in practice? Olivia: For one, she often refuses to use a recorder during interviews. She feels it turns a human conversation into a sterile, intimidating interrogation. Instead, she relies on memory, on shared trauma, and on capturing the emotional essence of the conversation. Jackson: Hold on. No recorder? And she relies on memory? As someone who values facts, that immediately makes me skeptical. How is that still journalism? Isn't that just… writing a fictional story inspired by real people? Olivia: It’s a fair question, and it’s one that gets to the heart of her project. She’s not aiming for what we traditionally think of as objective truth. She’s aiming for emotional truth. She argues that literal, word-for-word translations, for example, often fail the people she's writing about. She has this scathing quote where she says journalists who just transliterate Spanish, "make us sound dumb, like we all have a first-grade vocabulary." Jackson: Okay, I can see that. You lose the poetry, the nuance, the intelligence. So she’s trying to translate the feeling, not just the words. Olivia: Precisely. She calls it a poetic translation. She wants to capture the rhythm, the wit, the personality of the people she’s talking to. This desire to control her own narrative goes way back. After she wrote an anonymous essay at Harvard about being undocumented, agents were clamoring for her to write a memoir. They wanted the classic, sad story of the brilliant-but-suffering immigrant orphan. Jackson: The "sickly Victorian orphan," as she puts it. Olivia: Exactly. And she refused. She said she was too young and didn't want to be defined solely by her immigration status. She wanted to write about music. It took the political shock of 2016 for her to feel ready to write this book, but on her own terms. Jackson: So this defiant style, it’s born from a long-standing resistance to being turned into a simple, digestible sob story. Olivia: Absolutely. Her introduction sets the tone perfectly. On the night of the 2016 election, she was convinced Trump would win. Instead of panicking in sweatpants, she put on her finest clothes, a vintage dress, full makeup. She wrote, "I understood that night would be my end, but I would not be ushered to an internment camp in sweatpants." Jackson: Wow. That’s a powerful image. It’s not just fear; it’s defiance. It’s performance. It’s art as a response to terror. Olivia: And that’s her method in a nutshell. Her father, also undocumented, calls her that night and tells her it’s the "end times." The next morning, she gets up, doesn't even brush her teeth, and goes on a reporting trip. That’s when she emails an agent and says, "I'm ready to write the book." She compares the feeling she wants to give young immigrants with this book to the first time she heard Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'—a feeling of permission to be angry, to be messy, to be free. Jackson: So the book itself is an act of rebellion. It’s not just documenting stories; it’s trying to create a feeling, a liberation. Okay, I think I get the 'how' she tells the story now. But 'what' stories does this method uncover? What does this 'emotional truth' look like on the ground?

Olivia: It uncovers what she calls the "slow, silent" ways the state can harm people. It’s not always about a dramatic raid or a border wall. Sometimes, it’s about neglect. A perfect, and devastating, example is what happened to the undocumented cleanup workers at Ground Zero after 9/11. Jackson: I think many people remember the first responders, the firefighters and police. But I have a feeling there's a whole other story there. Olivia: A massive, largely invisible one. Thousands of undocumented laborers, many from Latin America, rushed to the site to help. They were hired by subcontractors for the most dangerous, grueling work—cleaning the toxic dust and debris from buildings, often deep in the basements. A man she profiles, Milton, describes the scene as looking "like a Western, just like a desert. Everything was dust and water and there was no light anywhere." Jackson: And I’m guessing they weren't given top-of-the-line protective gear. Olivia: They were given flimsy paper masks that broke almost immediately. They waded through contaminated water. And to make it all worse, this was a classic example of what the book calls a 'plantation model.' American contractors would hire bilingual, often Latinx, citizens as subcontractors. These subcontractors would then recruit undocumented workers from their own communities, pay them far below the going rate, and pocket the difference. Jackson: So they were being exploited by people from their own communities. That’s brutal. Olivia: It is. And it gets worse. After a week of back-breaking, dangerous work, Milton’s paycheck bounced. He was never paid for that time. And when the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund was set up, many of these workers were shut out. They lacked the documentation, the proof of employment, or their symptoms didn't appear until years after the application deadline had passed. They were essential to the cleanup, but completely invisible in the official narrative of heroism and recovery. Jackson: That’s infuriating. They were treated as disposable tools. You use them, you break them, and you throw them away. Olivia: And this idea of disposability, of systemic neglect being just as deadly as a weapon, is a thread that runs through the entire book. She finds the same pattern in a completely different crisis: the Flint, Michigan water crisis. Jackson: Another national tragedy. How did that affect the undocumented community specifically? Olivia: They were, as one resident put it, "the last to know." Official announcements were in English. Aid distribution points often required a state ID, which they didn't have. And there was a deep, pervasive fear of any interaction with government officials. Why would you go to a government-run water station if you're terrified of being deported? Jackson: Of course. The very people who could help you are the ones you've been trained to avoid at all costs. Olivia: Exactly. She tells the story of a woman named Lilliana, who had been living in Flint for 20 years. Her family drank the foul-smelling, discolored water for months. They eventually found out about the lead from community networks, not the government. By then, the damage was done. Lilliana was diagnosed with breast cancer, and blood tests showed her entire family had elevated lead levels. Jackson: Wow. So it's not a single villain, it's the system itself that's toxic. In one case, it's literal toxic dust, in the other, it's toxic water. The common thread is that these people are seen as disposable. Olivia: That’s the core argument. Villavicencio writes, and this is a chilling line, "The government wanted the people of Flint dead, or did not care if they died, which is the same thing." It’s a slow, unpunished killing through negligence. It’s the story of Ubaldo Cruz Martinez, a day laborer on Staten Island who drowned in a basement during Hurricane Sandy. The last thing he was doing, as the author imagines it, was trying to save a wounded squirrel he had found. Jackson: That detail about the squirrel… it’s just heartbreaking. It’s this small act of compassion in the face of total disaster and neglect. It completely humanizes him, moving him from a statistic to a person. Olivia: And that’s the power of her method. It reveals the human soul inside the systemic failure.

Olivia: And this sense of disposability, of being unwanted, creates a profound, intergenerational burden. It leads to what the author calls the 'twisted inversion' of the American Dream. Jackson: A 'twisted inversion.' What does she mean by that? Olivia: For many immigrant families, the narrative is that the parents sacrifice everything so their children can have a better life. The inversion is that for children of undocumented immigrants, their own personal American Dream often becomes making sure their parents can age and die with dignity in a country that has never truly wanted them. Jackson: That's heavy. It reframes the whole narrative of immigrant success. It's not just about 'making it.' It's about carrying the weight of your parents' unfulfilled dream and their precarious future on your shoulders. Olivia: It’s a huge burden. These parents have often worked grueling, under-the-table jobs their whole lives. They've paid into Social Security and Medicare through fake numbers, but they'll never see a dime of those benefits. They have no 401k, no pension, often no health insurance. So when their bodies start to break down, the responsibility falls entirely on their children. Jackson: So your entire life's financial plan is basically becoming your parents' retirement fund and social safety net, all rolled into one. Olivia: Yes. And it's deeply personal for the author. She talks about her own father, who is getting older and struggling to find restaurant work because of age discrimination. He hides it from her because he doesn't want to be a burden. The roles are completely reversed. The child becomes the protector, the provider, the parent. Jackson: And this isn't a unique story. She finds this pattern elsewhere, right? Olivia: All over. She tells the story of a young man named Ricardo Reyes. He's an American citizen, and his parents are undocumented. He turns 21, the age he can legally sponsor his parents for a green card. It's the moment he's been waiting for his whole life. Jackson: The moment he can finally make them 'legal' and secure. Olivia: But he goes to an immigration lawyer, who tells him it's too risky. Because his parents entered the country without authorization, filing the paperwork could actually trigger a deportation order. The very act of trying to fix their status could get them kicked out of the country. Jackson: That is the definition of a catch-22. It’s a cruel joke. So what happens? Olivia: The dream shatters. His mother tells him that when she can no longer work, she wants to go back to Mexico. So Ricardo's new American Dream is to work hard enough in the U.S. to be able to afford his parents' retirement in a country he barely knows. The promise of American citizenship for him becomes a tool to support his parents' life in exile. Jackson: That is a profound, quiet tragedy. It’s not a dramatic raid, it’s the slow, bureaucratic erosion of a family’s hope. It really is a twisted inversion.

Olivia: Exactly. And that's the book's ultimate power. Villavicencio isn't just writing about immigration policy or economic impacts. She's writing about the soul-crushing weight of being invisible, the slow violence of neglect, and the profound, complicated love that holds families together in the wreckage. Jackson: She’s not giving us easy answers or neat narratives. She’s showing us the messy, painful, and deeply human reality that gets lost in the political shouting matches. The book is a finalist for the National Book Award, and it’s received widespread acclaim, but I've also heard some readers find her first-person, highly emotional style to be self-centered. After this discussion, I see why that critique misses the point. Olivia: I think it does. Her personal story isn't a distraction from the reporting; it is the reporting. It's her entry point, her lens, and her claim to the authority to tell these stories. She’s not an outsider looking in; she’s a part of the community she’s writing about, with all the trauma and love that entails. Jackson: The book forces you to ask: what stories are we not hearing? And whose humanity are we choosing to ignore in our daily lives and in our politics? It’s not a comfortable read, but it feels like an essential one. Olivia: It truly does. It's a call for a more radical form of empathy, one that embraces complexity and messiness instead of demanding simple, heroic tales. Jackson: It’s a powerful message. For our listeners, if this conversation resonated with you, we’d love to hear your thoughts. What does the 'American Dream' mean to you after hearing these stories? You can always find us and join the conversation on our social channels. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.