Entry Questions
Do you think that Baruch College and CUNY at large openly talk about and discuss the concerns of students who are DREAMers, immigrants, or refugees? How can classmates, faculty, the administration, and your community help the students feel safe, secure, and welcome?
How does the debate over undocumented US Americans demonstrate the importance of civic engagement? How can we do this in our community?
Bio
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is an Ecuadorian-American writer and the author of The Undocumented Americans, published in 2020 and shortlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction. She has written about immigration, music, beauty, and mental illness. She was born in Ecuador in 1989. When she was a year and a half old, her parents immigrated to the US, leaving her with family. A few years later, her parents brought her to the US. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at Yale. She served as Baruch College’s own Harman Writer-in-Residence for the fall of 2021.
The Book
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. 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.
-Je Banach, Random House
Why do you think that the author chose to combine memoir with reportage, creative ethnography, and elements of fiction in her book?
What is the role of interviews and personal communications in Cornejo Villavicencio’s book? What type of questions she asks? How do the day laborers respond? What type of relationship she is building with the members of the communities she is interviewing?
Presentation(s) by:
Group Discussions
Group One
When and why did Staten Island first enter the author’s consciousness? Who are the day laborers and why does Cornejo Villavicencio travel to Staten Island in 2017 to meet them and speak with them?
Group Two
What kind of abuses do the day laborers particularly suffer as they seek out jobs and perform their work? Why were worker centers established and what assistance do they provide for the undocumented people who use them?
Group Three
What kinds of things do undocumented immigrants she interviews most want others to know about them? What questions does the author ask readers to consider at the end of “Staten Island”?
Group Four
Why is the prevalent use of the term “undocumented workers” hugely problematic? What troublesome ideas about human value does it reinforce or emphasize? How does she support and reinforce this redefinition of human value via her characterization of undocumented US Americans in her book?