This book is an incredible personal exploration on what it feels like to hold grief and joy in both hands.

Its narrative is divided into six distinct chapters, grounded by their location. Within each of them Cornejo Villavicencio parses out her own experience being undocumented into small vignettes. Her own narrative exists alongside those of her interview subjects, who often become extensions of her community and chosen family. She interweaves familial trauma, mental illness, care taking, the atrocities and failures of the American government, and survival flawlessly.

The Undocumented Americans closes with no solutions. There is no way to reconcile between obligation and resistance. It left me with a rekindled and omnipresent realization that true mutual aid and interdependence is a reprieve and source of resilience for so many. And of course, that we need to do everything in our power to dismantle these systems of white supremacy and oppression which are actively harming so many, in the macro and the micro, yesterday and today.