Dear America: An Interview with Jose Antonio Vargas

Kate Campbell, Jose Antonio Vargas

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Jose Antonio Vargas was sixteen when, signing up to take a driver’s test at his local DMV, he discovered his green card was fake. Now he’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, and the founder of Define American, an organization that fights anti-immigrant hate through the power of storytelling. But his future still hangs in the balance. In “Dear America,” Vargas divulges how he came out first as gay and then as undocumented, reflecting on the high cost of hiding from the government and himself (currently subject to deportation at any time, he has no permanent residence). Illuminating the purgatory of fear people without papers are forced to live in and posing questions about passing and the true meaning of citizenship, Vargas urges us to reconsider the assumptions we make.

Sponsored by North Berkeley Investment Partners