As if setting out to write a book about the undocumented immigrant experience across the country wasn’t hard enough, Karla Cornejo Villavivencio set a much higher bar for The Undocumented Americans. “I promised everyone in the book, all of my subjects, that I would get Americans to care. And that's a promise that I couldn't guarantee that I could keep,” she tells Alicia in this searing conversation about not wanting to be a political tool, being among the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard University,  and not thinking too much about herself to avoid “going into dark places.”

Follow Karla @kcornejov on Twitter and @kcornv on IG. If you loved this episode, listen to to-latina.simplecast.com/episodes/carmen-maria-machado-is-bending-queer-narratives-to-fit-her-reality">Carmen Maria Machado and to-latina.simplecast.com/episodes/in-the-heights-playwright-quiara-alegria-hudes-writes-so-people-remember-us">Quiara Alegría Hudes. Show your love and become a Latina to Latina Patreon supporter!