Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

Jose Antonio Vargas is the undocumented citizen who provides the book with its title. An autobiographical collection of essays, the book interweaves his life story with the general experiences of those without documentation in America. The book is not addressed to his fellow undocumented citizens. Instead, the book is an attempt to explain the humanity of an undocumented person’s situation to a wider (and presumably legal) population. He tells the story of the good people he meets and the many who help him. As well as these people, there are those who offer criticism. It is the latter that the author hopes to address and the former he wants to thank.

The narrative is presented as a quest: a search for identity as defined in a country which placed a large emphasis on documentation and legality. The author’s first difficult experience with identity is his sexuality; he comes to terms with his homosexuality through magazines and culture, discovering that America can be a warm and accepting place. He has another secret identity and knows that he must keep his undocumented status hidden. This anxiety eats away at the author until he chooses to reveal to the world that he is undocumented.