The Undocumented Americans
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The Undocumented Americans
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Narrated by:
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Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
About this listen
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • One of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard reveals the hidden lives of her fellow undocumented Americans in this deeply personal and groundbreaking portrait of a nation.
“Karla’s book sheds light on people’s personal experiences and allows their stories to be told and their voices to be heard.”—Selena Gomez
FINALIST FOR THE NBCC JOHN LEONARD AWARD • NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, NPR, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, BOOK RIOT, LIBRARY JOURNAL, AND TIME
Writer Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was on DACA when she decided to write about being undocumented for the first time using her own name. It was right after the election of 2016, the day she realized the story she'd tried to steer clear of was the only one she wanted to tell. So she wrote her immigration lawyer's phone number on her hand in Sharpie and embarked on a trip across the country to tell the stories of her fellow undocumented immigrants—and to find the hidden key to her own.
Looking beyond the flashpoints of the border or the activism of the DREAMers, Cornejo Villavicencio explores the lives of the undocumented—and the mysteries of her own life. She finds the singular, effervescent characters across the nation often reduced in the media to political pawns or nameless laborers. The stories she tells are not deferential or naively inspirational but show the love, magic, heartbreak, insanity, and vulgarity that infuse the day-to-day lives of her subjects.
In New York, we meet the undocumented workers who were recruited into the federally funded Ground Zero cleanup after 9/11. In Miami, we enter the ubiquitous botanicas, which offer medicinal herbs and potions to those whose status blocks them from any other health-care options. In Flint, Michigan, we learn of demands for state ID in order to receive life-saving clean water. In Connecticut, Cornejo Villavicencio, childless by choice, finds family in two teenage girls whose father is in sanctuary. And through it all we see the author grappling with the biggest questions of love, duty, family, and survival.
In her incandescent, relentlessly probing voice, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio combines sensitive reporting and powerful personal narratives to bring to light remarkable stories of resilience, madness, and death. Through these stories we come to understand what it truly means to be a stray. An expendable. A hero. An American.
©2020 Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (P)2020 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 38
"Latino" is the most open-ended and loosely defined of the major race categories in the United States. Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of "Latino" assembles the Pulitzer Prize winner Héctor Tobar's personal experiences as the son of Guatemalan immigrants and the stories told to him by his Latinx students to offer a spirited rebuke to racist ideas about Latino people.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Plays in the idea of “we are the victims.”
- By Luis F. Ruiz on 02-15-24
By: Héctor Tobar
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My Broken Language
- A Memoir
- By: Quiara Alegría Hudes
- Narrated by: Quiara Alegría Hudes
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 280
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 256
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 256
Quiara Alegría Hudes was the sharp-eyed girl on the stairs while her family danced their defiance in a tight North Philly kitchen. She was awed by her mother and aunts and cousins, but haunted by the unspoken, untold stories of the barrio — even as she tried to find her own voice in the sea of language around her, written and spoken, English and Spanish, bodies and books, Western art and sacred altars.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A voice that needed to be heard
- By Juan C. Velandia on 04-08-21
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The Devil's Highway
- A True Story
- By: Luis Alberto Urrea
- Narrated by: Luis Alberto Urrea
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,390
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,230
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,228
In May 2001, a group of men attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona, through the deadliest region of the continent, the "Devil's Highway." Three years later, Luis Alberto Urrea wrote about what happened to them. The result was a national bestseller, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a "book of the year" in multiple newspapers, and a work proclaimed as a modern American classic.
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5 out of 5 stars
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My Favorite Author to Listen to
- By C. F. Eastman on 03-08-18
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You Sound Like a White Girl
- The Case for Rejecting Assimilation
- By: Julissa Arce
- Narrated by: Julissa Arce
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 416
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 366
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Story5 out of 5 stars 365
In this dual polemic and manifesto, Julissa dives into and tears apart the lie that assimilation leads to belonging. She combs through history and her own story to break down this myth, arguing that assimilation is a moving finish line designed to keep Black and brown Americans and immigrants chasing racist American ideals. She talks about the Lie of Success, the Lie of Legality, the Lie of Whiteness, and the Lie of English - each promising that if you obtain these things, you will reach acceptance and won’t be an outsider anymore.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Thank you!
- By mexime on 09-01-22
By: Julissa Arce
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Once I Was You
- A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America
- By: Maria Hinojosa
- Narrated by: Maria Hinojosa
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 562
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 494
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Story5 out of 5 stars 487
Maria Hinojosa is an award-winning journalist who, for nearly 30 years, has reported on stories and communities in America that often go ignored by the mainstream media - from tales of hope in the South Bronx to the unseen victims of the war on terror and the first detention camps in the US. Best-selling author Julia Álvarez has called her “one of the most important, respected, and beloved cultural leaders in the Latinx community”. In Once I Was You, Maria shares her intimate experience growing up Mexican American on the South Side of Chicago.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fabulous!!
- By andrea L. on 01-13-21
By: Maria Hinojosa
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Chingona
- Owning Your Inner Badass for Healing and Justice
- By: Alma Zaragoza-Petty
- Narrated by: Alma Zaragoza-Petty
- Length: 4 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 78
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 71
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Story5 out of 5 stars 71
In Chingona, Mexican American activist, scholar, and podcast host Alma Zaragoza-Petty helps us claim our inner chingona, a Spanish term for "badass woman." Working for change while preserving her spirit, a chingona repurposes her pain for the good of the world. She may even learn that she belongs to a long line of chingonas who came before her—unruly women who used their persevering energy to survive and thrive.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I was able to connect on so many levels with this book asa 1st generation Latina.
- By Dolores Diosdado on 04-20-25
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Dear America
- Notes of an Undocumented Citizen
- By: Jose Antonio Vargas
- Narrated by: Jose Antonio Vargas
- Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 821
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 740
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 732
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, called “[T]he most famous undocumented immigrant in America”, tackles one of the defining issues of our time in this explosive and deeply personal call to arms.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Varga's story needs to be read in schools!
- By V R. Jasso on 10-12-18
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Solito
- A Memoir
- By: Javier Zamora
- Narrated by: Javier Zamora
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 3,200
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 2,964
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Story5 out of 5 stars 2,959
Javier Zamora’s adventure is a three-thousand-mile journey from his small town in El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border. He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling alone amid a group of strangers and a “coyote” hired to lead them to safety, Javier expects his trip to last two short weeks.
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5 out of 5 stars
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MASTERPIECE of Poetic Prose, Outstanding Narration
- By Mary Burnight on 01-12-23
By: Javier Zamora
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Tell Me How It Ends
- An Essay in 40 Questions
- By: Valeria Luiselli
- Narrated by: Laurence Bouvard
- Length: 2 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 229
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 188
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 186
Structured around the 40 questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation, Tell Me How It Ends (an expansion of her 2016 Freeman's essay of the same name) humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction between the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants and the reality of racism and fear - both here and back home.
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5 out of 5 stars
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educate yourself
- By keji kujjo on 10-04-18
By: Valeria Luiselli
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Undocumented
- How Immigration Became Illegal
- By: Aviva Chomsky
- Narrated by: Frankie Corzo
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 104
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 92
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 90
In this illuminating work, immigrant rights activist Aviva Chomsky shows how “illegality” and “undocumentedness” are concepts that were created to exclude and exploit. With a focus on US policy, she probes how people, especially Mexican and Central Americans, have been assigned this status—and to what ends.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Greatly informative.
- By jared on 12-10-18
By: Aviva Chomsky
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Living Beyond Borders
- Growing Up Mexican in America
- By: Margarita Longoria
- Narrated by: Alejandro Ruiz, Kyla Garcia, Margarita Longoria
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 24
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 21
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 21
In this mixed-media collection of short stories, personal essays, and poetry, this celebrated group of authors share the borders they have crossed, the struggles they have pushed through, and the two cultures they continue to navigate as Mexican Americans. Living Beyond Borders is at once an eye-opening, heart-wrenching, and hopeful love letter from the Mexican American community to today's young listeners.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Will buy the hard copy to keep forever
- By Anonymous User on 12-04-23
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Catalina
- A Novel
- By: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
- Narrated by: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 71
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Story4 out of 5 stars 65
When Catalina is admitted to Harvard, it feels like the fulfillment of destiny: a miracle child escapes death in Latin America, moves to Queens to be raised by her undocumented grandparents, and becomes one of the chosen. But nothing is simple for Catalina, least of all her own complicated, contradictory, ruthlessly probing mind. Now a senior, she faces graduation to a world that has no place for the undocumented; her sense of doom intensifies her curiosities and desires. She infiltrates the school’s elite subcultures—internships and literary journals, posh parties and secret societies.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Monotone delivery
- By Patricia M Hart on 11-01-24
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Border and Rule
- Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism
- By: Harsha Walia, Robin D. G. Kelley - foreword, Nick Estes - afterword
- Narrated by: Cindy Kay
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 45
Border and Rule explores a number of seemingly disparate global geographies with shared logics of border rule that displace, immobilize, criminalize, exploit, and expel migrants and refugees. With her keen ability to connect the dots, Harsha Walia demonstrates how borders divide the international working class and consolidate imperial, capitalist, and racist nationalist rule.
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1 out of 5 stars
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What is this?
- By John Gathly on 05-29-22
By: Harsha Walia, and others
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LatinoLand
- A Portrait of America's Largest and Least Understood Minority
- By: Marie Arana
- Narrated by: Cynthia Farrell
- Length: 18 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 20
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 19
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 19
LatinoLand is an exceptional, all-encompassing overview of Hispanic America based on personal interviews, deep research, and Marie Arana’s life experience as a Latina. At present, Latinos comprise twenty percent of the US population, a number that is growing. By 2050, census reports project that one in every three Americans will claim Latino heritage.
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2 out of 5 stars
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If you’re searching for the truth, this may not be your resource. Had children
- By Melissa L. Cook on 09-17-24
By: Marie Arana
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A Nation of Nations
- A Story of America After the 1965 Immigration Law
- By: Tom Gjelten
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 28
In 1950, Fairfax County, Virginia, was 90 percent white, 10 percent African American, with a little more than 100 families who were "other". Currently the African American percentage of the population is about the same, but the Anglo white population is less than 50 percent, and there are families of Asian, African, Middle Eastern, and Latin American origin living all over the county. A Nation of Nations follows the lives of a few immigrants to Fairfax County over recent decades as they gradually "Americanize".
By: Tom Gjelten
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The Line Becomes a River
- Dispatches from the Border
- By: Francisco Cantú
- Narrated by: Francisco Cantú
- Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 995
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 889
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 887
For Francisco Cantú, the border is in the blood: His mother, a park ranger and daughter of a Mexican immigrant, raised him in the scrublands of the Southwest. Driven to understand the hard realities of the landscape he loves, Cantú joins the Border Patrol. He and his partners learn to track other humans under blistering sun and through frigid nights. They haul in the dead and deliver to detention those they find alive. Plagued by a growing awareness of his complicity in a dehumanizing enterprise, he abandons the patrol for civilian life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A necessary read, I am thankful for
- By LB on 02-10-18
By: Francisco Cantú
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Racial Innocence
- Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality
- By: Tanya Katerí Hernández
- Narrated by: Almarie Guerra
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story5 out of 5 stars 29
Racial Innocence will challenge what you thought about racism and bias and demonstrate that it’s possible for a historically marginalized group to experience discrimination and also be discriminatory. Racism is deeply complex, and law professor and comparative race relations expert Tanya Katerí Hernández exposes “the Latino racial innocence cloak” that often veils Latino complicity in racism. As Latinos are the second-largest ethnic group in the US, this revelation is critical to dismantling systemic racism.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Finally feeling seen and heard
- By Eileen Fuentes on 03-24-23
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Relentless
- My Story of the Latino Spirit That Is Transforming America
- By: Luis A. Miranda Jr., Richard Wolffe - contributor, Lin-Manuel Miranda - foreword
- Narrated by: Luis A. Miranda Jr.
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 16
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 14
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Story5 out of 5 stars 14
A veteran of New York and national politics, Luis Miranda embodies the relentless spirit of progress of American immigrants. There is no one on the Latino, New York, and national political scene with the breadth of experience, passion, and storytelling charm of Luis Miranda. In Relentless, he shares a fascinating narrative of his life and career—from his early days as a radically minded Puerto Rican activist to his decades of political advice and problem-solving.
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4 out of 5 stars
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inspiring story
- By yuli pineda on 12-05-24
By: Luis A. Miranda Jr., and others
What listeners say about The Undocumented Americans
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- RapaciousReader
- 04-11-20
Raw, heartbreaking - we can do better by others
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was featured on This American Life on NPR 04/10/2020, she read an excerpt of this gripping account of her life and it was absolutely heartbreaking and raw. It hurt my heart that someone right here in the USA, right this minute is being treated like garbage, less than. Its disgusting and we are not doing enough. This is not the ideal I was serving during my time in the military. We can do more. We must do more. No one is more entitled to this place than anyone else, all humans have the same birthright.
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10 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- amy iadarola
- 01-04-21
Beautiful and devastating
Everyone should read this book. It’s beautifully written, deeply haunting , and even funny at times. Highly recommend.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Kindle Customer
- 12-27-20
I loved every part of this book.
excellent book. what a wonderful experience.
I recommend this book to anyone . it's amazing.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Raquel Castro-Corazzini
- 03-31-21
Hit me to my core
Loved this book. It was tragic and funny. I enjoyed Karla's corky personality and felt her vulnerability.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 10-13-22
Everyone should read this!
Such a powerful book. You cannot unsee the truth after reading it. The issues or rather stories in the book affects us all.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Lawrence Cross
- 09-18-23
We all need to hear this…
By far, the most intimate, unfiltered reality told in words that are beautiful, gut wrenching and authentic. I am better equipped to understand and do the work that this book has called into action in my own life. Ignorance can only be bliss up to the point of the reveal. This book is a revelation. Thank you for sharing your gift, experience and research. We can not heal or begin to help what we do not know, please keep sharing.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 05-10-20
poignant and impossible to forget
it all hit hard. incredible writing, powerful reflections. I took notes. you should too.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- ElFenix
- 11-21-20
The real deal
Moving, inspiring, catalyzing. This book, it's story, emboldened my activist work on matters of immigration.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Elisa Sparkman
- 05-11-21
Outstanding work of nonfiction
I don't think I've ever read any nonfiction book as vulnerable and raw as this one. I highly recommend it.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- K.Nicholson
- 10-29-21
Excellent Read
The writing in this book is phenomenal! I also love that it’s read by the author!
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