Javier Zamora’s Borderland Memories

In the most trivial sense, books about being undocumented are about immigration. Dan-el Padilla Peralta’s Undocumented, Julissa Arce’s My (Undocumented) American Dream, Jose Antonio Vargas’s Dear America, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s The Undocumented Americans, and Qian Julie Wang’s Beautiful Country are all about how US immigration policies can sever family ties and categorically exclude populations deemed “undesirable.” These narratives are also about much more: They are about family, childhood, trauma, gender, loss, and joy. They are about the ways in which migrants are far more than the sum of what the United States puts hem through. They are agents in their own right, who define and shape their histories.