Recent Reviews
Dear America, Notes of an Undocumented Citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas’, ‘Dear America, Notes of an Undocumented Citizen’ is a well-written and heartbreaking account of his experiences with our country’s broken immigration system and diminishing moral vision. Though the book includes immigration statistics, historical records and sociological analysis, its strength derives from Vargas’ personalization of our country’s punitive and punishing immigration policies. Look no farther than recent news reports about children being separated from their parents at the Mexican border to know that lawmakers must take action. The complication: an increasing number of policymakers oppose accepting more immigrants, illegal or legal. It appears they want to keep people of color out of our country. Vargas’s book illustrates the critical importance of compromise and the necessity for a transparent process for immigration. A resolution will benefit not just immigrants but repair the soul of our country.
In 1993, when Vargas was 12-years old and living in the Philippines, his mother told him they were going to live with her parents in America. He would fly first with an “uncle,” and soon, his mother would follow. The “uncle” turned out to be a smuggler whom his grandfather had paid. Vargas’s story echoes the experience of millions of children (many who are now referred to as Dreamers) who were brought to the United States illegally by parents who wanted a better life for their children.
He moved into his grandparents’ house in Mountain View, California, in Silicon Valley. Though his Mom’s arrival kept getting delayed, he worked hard to become “American.” He was bright, curious and became very involved in his middle school and high school. Everything changed when he turned 16. Without telling his grandparents, he went to the DMV to obtain his driver’s permit. The bureaucrat told him his green card was fake. He biked home in a panic. His grandfather said in Tagalog, “You are not supposed to be here.” Those words haunted him for years.
And yet, he couldn’t return to the Philippines either. His passport was fraudulent. He says of his large extended family that had immigrated legally, “They had conspired to send me to America to give me a better life without realizing they had created a nightmare for me. And I was scared. I couldn’t stay legally. I couldn’t leave legally either. I was trapped.”
Vargas shifts into overdrive to “earn” his place in America. He confides in trusted adults in his school community who embrace him. They help him apply to college, obtain a scholarship and navigate newspaper internships. Vargas feels free writing and reporting. “I realized that writing was the freest thing I could do, unencumbered by borders and legal documents and largely dependent on my skills and talent.” Soon he writes for several eminent publications, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post and the New Yorker.
Yet, the cost of lying, passing and hiding extracts a substantial emotional price. Vargas’ anxiety soars as he fears exposure. He makes “illegal” choices as he continues working and living in a legal no-man’s land. He asks his readers,” If you wanted to have a career if you wanted to have a life, if you wanted to exist as a human being, what would you have done?” When he turns thirty, he decides to share his undocumented legal status publically. He notes how pundits, policymakers, and American citizens don’t understand the immigration system. People say, “Just get to the back of the line and all will be good,” and Vargas wants to scream, “THERE IS NO LINE. THERE IS NO PROCESS. IN THE EYES OF THE LAW, I DO NOT EXIST.”
Vargas’s book is both insightful and inspiring. He understands the political and racial dimensions of this issue. He says, “When white people move, then and now, it’s seen as courageous and necessary, celebrated in history books. Yet when people of color move, legally or illegally, the migration itself is subject to the question of legality. Most immigrants, he reminds us, love America, obey the laws and pay their taxes.
For Jose Antonio Vargas and his fellow Dreamers, the United States is their home. By sharing his undocumented status, he has sacrificed a great deal. His journey continues to be painful, with no resolution in sight. He reminds us of what many Americans seem to forget: except for Native Americans, we are all immigrants.
An American Summer by Alex Kotlowitz
Full Disclosure: Alex Kotlowitz is a good friend.
Alex Kotlowitz’s 1991 New York Times bestseller There Are No Children Here chronicles the lives of Pharaoh and Lafayette Rivers, two young brothers living in the Henry Horner Homes project on the West Side of Chicago. Perceptive, poignant and painful, that groundbreaking book detailed how poverty and violence robbed these boys of their childhoods.
Kotlowitz’s newly published book An American Summer reads like a sequel. In the twenty years after There Are No Children Here, “14,033 people were killed, another roughly 60,000 wounded by gunfire.” These statistics are shocking. Returning to West and South Side neighborhoods, Kotlowitz updates us on residents he first met in the 1980s and introduces us to people connected to the 172 victims of violence in the summer of 2013.
Why has this violence persisted? Kotlowitz makes this observation; “These are young men and women who are burdened by fractured families, by lack of money, by a closing window of opportunity, by a sense that they don’t belong, by a feeling of low self-worth. So when they feel disrespected or violated, they explode, often out of proportion to the moment, because so much other hurt has built up and then the dam bursts. They become flooded with anger.” In a series of stories, we witness this dynamic. When a gang member sees a sign of disrespect, a small disagreement can escalate into murder and mayhem. The inclination to clarify misunderstandings or think through decisions is missing. These troubled African-American and Hispanic communities are like powder kegs of raw emotion.
Why residents of these communities have not turned their anger toward the Chicago power structure that ignores their plight confounds me. Kotlowitz reflects on this: “You grow up in a community with abandoned homes, a jobless rate of over 25 percent, underfunded schools and you stand outside your home, look at the city’s gleaming downtown skyline, and its prosperity, and you know your place in the world.” So instead of demanding respect from those who live in these bastions of privilege, people in this other Chicago demand respect from their local rivals.
Weaving together correspondence and personal interviews, Kotlowitz illuminates the thoughts and feelings of people living in this war zone. He shows the hopes and dreams of parents and the fears and frustrations of siblings and spouses. He also captures the energy, support and sacrifices by teachers and counselors. Many of the young men feel remorse, guilt and doubt about their role in the violence. One young man wants punishment. Another feels he let his family down. One doesn’t want to utter his victim’s name because it will make his crime feel real.
Bail hearings, courtroom trials and prison visits dominate people's lives. Innocent bystanders die in the crossfire and PTSD infiltrates the community. Many kids fear they will die young. Residents of these neighborhoods know not one, but several people who have died from gun violence. The madness continues, in part, because witnesses rarely come forward. In one chapter we learn, “Even though neighbors, family, friends, witnesses and the police are certain who killed Ramaine Hill, there has not been, and may never be an arrest or prosecution.” Retaliation shooting is commonplace for those who do testify.
An American Summer bears witness to the human toll of relentless violence. Like Studs Terkel, Upton Sinclair and Elliot Liebow, Kotlowitz shows us the complexity, humanity and nuances of people’s lives. While he offers no specific solution, he makes evident that poverty, racism, educational inequality, scarcity of jobs and the ubiquity of guns are the root causes of this tragedy. Instead of consciously (or unconsciously) blaming the people growing up in these harsh conditions, we should all be ashamed that our fellow citizens are abandoned to this fate.
Inheritance by Dani Shapiro
This review was published in the San Francisco Examiner on February 17, 2019
http://www.sfexaminer.com/inheritance-gripping-memoir-family-love-identity/
In her thoughtful and gripping new memoir, “Inheritance”, Dani Shapiro recounts the shock and sorrow of discovering that she was conceived by artificial insemination. Not only is her father not her biological father, she loses her proud identity as a one-hundred-percent Ashkenazi Jew. Fifty-four years old, an only child with deceased parents, Shapiro feels like an earthquake has destroyed the foundation of her life. She is left to determine what of her identity remains and how she will integrate this revelation into her life.
This book is a fascinating read by a gifted writer. At one level, it is a mystery: Who is her biological father? At another level, it is a psychological drama. Why didn’t her parents tell her? At yet another level, it is an investigation into artificial insemination. Are there records from this defunct clinic?
While she pursues answers to these questions, she absorbs each new fact with understanding, empathy and grace. Shapiro’s memoir is made richer by the ruminations of rabbis, relatives, therapists and doctors with whom she consults.
Shapiro describes a difficult childhood. Her parents, Paul and Irene, had a complicated marriage, burdened by bitterness and resentment. Her mother’s volatile personality had a corrosive effect on the household. But her father’s unconditional love and acceptance sustained Shapiro. She went to Yeshiva, spoke Hebrew and spent Saturday mornings with him at synagogue. He came from a long line of respected Orthodox leaders, which gave Shapiro a sense of grounding, pride and belonging.
Yet Shapiro often felt like an outsider. Seared into her memory is a survivor’s comment, “We could have used you in the ghetto, little blondie. You could have gotten us bread from the Nazis.” Early on, she experiences the feeling of being included and excluded from her community. Shapiro says, “Now I know that it was the kernel of truth embedded in that memory that kept it intact for me.”
The book’s most intriguing theme is the impact of secrets. Had her parents just deceived her or had they also deceived themselves? Did they come to believe Paul was her biological father? She concludes about her parents, “If it wasn’t thought, it wasn’t so. If it wasn’t spoken, it hadn’t happened. Except that secrets, particularly the most deeply held ones, have a way of leaching into everything surrounding them.”
Using social media and genealogical websites, Shapiro finds her biological father, now a doctor and medical ethicist she calls Ben Walden. When Shapiro watches him lecture on YouTube, she is startled by their resemblance. She sends him an inquiry and he confirms he donated sperm to a clinic in Philadelphia in the 1960s. One strand of the story follows the complicated, beautiful evolution of their relationship.
Sprinkled with literary, psychoanalytic and philosophical references, the book ponders assumptions about identity. By the end, Dani Shapiro seems to have found peace. The central enigma of her life is known. “Their trauma became mine–had always been mine. It was my inheritance, my lot. My parents’ tortured pact of secrecy was as much a part of me as the genes that had been passed down by my mother and Ben Walden.”
Though Shapiro will probably continue to wrestle with the implications of this genetic surprise, she feels blessed by the man she comes from AND the man who loved her into being. Shapiro says of her father, Paul, “I was connected to him on the level of neshama (Hebrew word for soul), which had nothing to do with biology, and everything to do with love.” In the end, love is her beautiful inheritance.
