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Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, finalist in the National Book Awards

2020-11-17T22:50:13.214Z


It is the first time that an undocumented immigrant has been named a finalist for the prestigious award. We speak with Karla Cornejo Villavicencio


Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

(CNN) -

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio says she is suffering the guilt of a survivor.

In 2010, he wrote a widely read anonymous essay for The Daily Beast about life as an undocumented student at Harvard.


In October, less than a decade later, Cornejo Villavicencio became a finalist for the National Book Awards.

It is the first time that an undocumented immigrant has been named a finalist for the prestigious award, the winners of which will be announced Wednesday.

"I felt extremely guilty that my people are dying," he says, noting how the coronavirus pandemic continues to take a devastating toll on the undocumented community.

"But I am very honored, and I hope to be the first, but not the last."


Cornejo Villavicencio is no longer undocumented;

you recently received your green card and became a lawful permanent resident.

The stories he tells in "The Undocumented Americans" are intended to reveal the complex lives of people who are often oversimplified or overlooked, who, as he says in the introduction to his book, " they don't inspire hashtags or t-shirts. "

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio: They were stories that I had never seen published

"This book is for everyone who wants to get away from immigration buzzwords, talking heads, children in graduation caps and gowns, and read about underground people," writes Cornejo Villavicencio.

No heroes.

Random people.

People.

Characters".

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She says the 2016 election results pushed her to tell stories that she had witnessed her entire life but had never seen published.

“I had read many books that I felt they did not represent migrants well in an interesting way.

They were mostly misspelled.

It was based a lot on cartoons and cliches, ”he says.

"And I always thought I could do better, but I never felt like I had a fire in my stomach until election night."

MIRA: Republican strategist hopes that status will be given to the undocumented who have been waiting for more than 15 years

In "The Undocumented Americans," Karla Cornejo Villavicencio stands on the street corners with day laborers in Staten Island and goes to therapy with workers who were on the front lines cleaning up the debris after 9/11.

She talks to families in Flint, Michigan who are still afraid to drink the water, and meets with women in Miami who turn to herbal remedies when the health system excludes them.

Regardless, she weaves her own family's story into a creative nonfiction work that critics have hailed as "haunting and evocative" and "deeply revealing."


Cornejo Villavicencio spoke to CNN recently about the book, his journey, and the stories he feels need to be told.

The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

"I did not write for white people," says Cornejo Villavicencio

CNN: "Undocumented Americans" is dedicated to Claudia Gómez González, who was killed by a Border Patrol agent in 2018. Why did you decide to dedicate it to her?

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio:

I wanted to come here, study and be a nurse.

And I feel like they killed her in cold blood.

And yet the moment I learned of his death, I felt very guilty and personally responsible.

He came here because he wanted a better life, which is classically what Americans have been told this country is for, but they no longer accept it.

They want people to run away, like, from an asteroid.

And I felt like it represented, you know, that life, that it was education, skill, a different world.

And it's hard to explain, but I felt like I had betrayed her in some way because people like me hadn't been entirely open about the fact that they were hunting us here.

CNN: You propose not to sugarcoat things, to describe the good things about your characters, but also not to shy away from talking about their flaws.

Why was it important for you to write the full picture of the people you met?

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio:

These are people I know and love and they are people who share life experiences with me.

He hadn't received the full picture from anyone before, so he had to.

I'm also a good writer, so I couldn't imagine a world where a two-dimensional character would write if I tried.

… I would have [had] to do what a lot of people do, which is simply believe in the template that Hollywood and publications give you, which is "what Latin literature is supposed to sound like," and write in that template.

I'm sure perfectly nice, smart, clever, provocative, good writers write these dumb books because they're writing for white readers.

And I could have written one of those books if I had chosen to write for a white audience, but I didn't.

I chose to write for the children of immigrants.

I chose to write for immigrants.

I chose to write for people of color.

And, you know, that's why it's a book that has basenotes.

It is not a simple fragrance.

Source: cnnespanol

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