Dear America, Notes of an Undocumented Citizen
Jose Antonio Vargas
Harper Collins
2018
Ms. Hen read this because it was a gift from a hen friend.
She couldn't figure out how to write about it to give it justice,
so she
decided to write this in verse. This is a person’s story about
how his life
was a lie, and how he was brought to America, and didn’t
know he was gifted
here illegally. His mother who loved him
sent him to live with his grandparents who loved her,
and he never knew he was not supposed to be here until
he tried to get a driver’s license.
He hid the truth from almost everyone who surrounded him.
He lived his life as a fallacy.
Ms. Hen knows what this is like,
to be in hiding, to shield the truth
from the world.
But his lies were different.
His safety depended on it.
Until he decided to tell everyone. He had worked illegally
at newspapers, including The
Washington Post.
It’s a risk for people to come to this country illegally,
but the reward is so much better.
Because here there exists a chance to become what they could
not
in their home countries: safe, successful, or sane.
The American dream is what a person wants it to be.
Nowhere on Earth is perfect, but it’s the idea of perfection
that drives people to come to America. The dream of a better
life,
of what they did not have in their own countries.
A hopeful future. A place to blossom.
Mr. Vargas fights for the rights of people to be here,
to try to live that dream. Ms. Hen admires this.
Ms. Hen thinks this is an important book that asks
complicated questions that should be pursued,
and pursued further and further until they’re unraveled
and almost figured out.
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