Undocumented in L.A.: An Immigrant's Story (Latin American Silhouettes)

Rating:
Summary: Unprofessional; Inaccessible
Review: I highly recommend this book. It is a joy to read the story of a Nicaraguan lady who makes a journey with members of her family. The destination is the U.S.; the length of stay is short term. As Yamileth will tell you, plans don't always come out the way they were intended. The heroine of the book is a woman, mother, and activist, who has strong family values supported by age old ideals, and who has the courage to live them. The best feature of "Undocumented in L.A." is that it is apolitical. The ideals to which Yamileth is commited and her ways of expressing them are delightful. Through her clear reasoning I was able to have a clearer understanding of the immigrant experience without all the media hype or the outragious editorialization. In the retelling of Yamileth's saga, we are also given an insider's view of foreign relations, inter-racial conflicts, and the divisions of labor in a household where all the occupants are "Undocumented in L. A." "For me the future is thinking about tomorrow and preparing yourself for it. The only heritage a parent can leave is the intellectual preparation of a child... An education allows them to fight for survival, wherever they go. No one can take away that inheritance."--one of Yamileth's values.

Rating:
Summary: Yamileth: A Sojourner
Review: I highly recommend this book. It is a joy to read the story of a Nicaraguan lady who makes a journey with members of her family. The destination is the U.S.; the length of stay is short term. As Yamileth will tell you, plans don't always come out the way they were intended. The heroine of the book is a woman, mother, and activist, who has strong family values supported by age old ideals, and who has the courage to live them. The best feature of "Undocumented in L.A." is that it is apolitical. The ideals to which Yamileth is commited and her ways of expressing them are delightful. Through her clear reasoning I was able to have a clearer understanding of the immigrant experience without all the media hype or the outragious editorialization. In the retelling of Yamileth's saga, we are also given an insider's view of foreign relations, inter-racial conflicts, and the divisions of labor in a household where all the occupants are "Undocumented in L. A." "For me the future is thinking about tomorrow and preparing yourself for it. The only heritage a parent can leave is the intellectual preparation of a child... An education allows them to fight for survival, wherever they go. No one can take away that inheritance."--one of Yamileth's values.

Rating:
Summary: Unprofessional; Inaccessible
Review: I was required to read this book for a course I'm currently taking in college. I have seldom seen such a sloppy, unprofessional, inaccessible work such as I did upon reading this particular work.

The content of the narrative itself is unremarkable; Hart recounts the tale of Yamileth and her family members, virtually all of whom are undocumented (a euphemism for 'illegal') immigrants in the United States.

I saw no compelling reasons whatsoever for the existence of this book. One of the hallmarks of documentary nonfiction is ostensibly objectivity, a professional detachment from the subject. There is none of that here. Hart is herself involved intimately with Yamileth's life, and liberally narrates her own actions throughout the course of the text. Hart's continued non-intervention (and in fact, implicit encouragement) of the numerous acts of illegal immigration throughout the text is unsettling, if not outright disturbing.

Hart maintains a unnecessarily loyal relationship with the oral history she performs; the salient narrative is presented entirely in extremely unnecessary quotation marks, apparently in an effort to bring about a sense of intimacy. This effort, unfortunately, fails miserably. I found the text immensely inaccessible, and the slavish devotion to verbatim dictation extremely off-putting. I saw no reason whatsoever for Hart's act of essentially presenting an annotated transcription of her interview. My only hypothesis would be laziness, but again, Hart's gratuitous editorial commentary appears to contradict that particular possibility.

Given the paucity of compelling subject matter (Yamileth's story is neither unique nor extraordinary), Hart deserves some measure of acknowledgement for not only writing this book, but also for getting it published.

Had Hart chosen a more objective, narrative format (The Autobiography of Malcolm X, another text I read in the same course, is a superb example), her message would have been vastly more credible, as well as entertaining to read. Hart's narrative seems forced; Hart's numerous editorial comments lend an air of artificiality, and give a sense of desperation, or 'padding the text,' if you will.

Hart lacks the academic credentials for conducting oral history projects, and this fact is readily evident throughout the text. The narrative is in fact extremely boring, as a great deal of text is wasted on the trivial details of Yamileth's daily life. Yamileth herself comes across as a strange character; many of the actions she takes throughout the text would very kindly be described as 'misguided' if not outright stupid. The greatest example of this is her decision to leave Oregon (where she had a satisfying job, and her son was truly happy), and return to live with her manipulative sister in Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, she is jobless and unhappy, and her son even more so. Perhaps even more confusing is her ultimate decision to return to Nicaragua, which in some senses proves to be even worse than Los Angeles. Yamileth comes across as consistently indecisive, as well as impractical. Her dithering would be acceptable were she only by herself, but her continued decisions to deny her son happiness and stability in life reek of irresponsibility, as well as juvenility.

In short, Yamileth doesn't know what she wants with life, and in her continued half-fulfilled plans she manages to drag her children down with her. Similarly, Hart doesn't know what she wants to do with this book. I in fact fail to see why anybody would read this out of their own volition. To anyone else taking the same class as I am now (I wish to remain anonymous, but suffice to say I attend a prestigious school in Northern California) - don't worry...it gets better from here on.

Rating:
Summary: Better understanding of plight of illegal immigrants in U.S.
Review: With government looking for ways to limit rights of immigrants in California, Dianne Walta Hart's newest book is very timely. Ms. Hart has culled her interviews with a Nicaraguan woman to tell the immigrant's side of the situation.

Ms. Hart's first book, Thanks to God and the Revolution: The Oral History of a Nicaraguan Family (1990) introduced 4 members of the Lopez family, who described their difficult life in Nicaragua during the revolution. Each family member presented his view of their attempts to survive in a society where employment is difficult to find and the life style is meager. The closeness of the Nicaraguans within their families and neighborhoods is a contrast to the American individualism.

Ten years later, Yamileth and her son Miguel are living as undocumented immigrants in L.A. Through the interviews, their difficulty of survival in a new land is apparent. Again, the close family ties and cultural values weigh heavily on the decisions to be made in their lives.

In T. Coraghessan Boyle's The Tortilla Curtain, the reader meets Mexical illegal immigrants who go to great lengths to find work and take care of themselves in a foreign land. One might discount these characters as fictional and idealized, but the true story Ms. Hart presents shows the actual extreme efforts made by hard working illegal aliens who wish to survive and to find a better life. The stories present people who will not eat a meal if they have not contributed or earned it; people who are honorable and will not always choose the easiest way. Decisions which seem plain to an American do not always fit with the cultural responsibility felt by a person from another country. This book helps one better understand the plight of illegal immigrants in the United States.