While the U.S. immigration debate turns strident in media circles, Caminero-Santangelo intervenes with a call to read carefully the more complex stories that define us as human and humane. Debra A. Castillo, coeditor of "Mexican Public Intellectuals"
This insightful study brings together Latino fiction, journalistic books, and autobiographical accounts to consider how undocumented people are portrayed in the wake of restrictive immigration policies. Rodrigo Lazo, author of "Writing to Cuba: Filibustering and Cuban Exiles in the United States"
Looking at the work of Junot Diaz, Cristina Garcia, Julia Alvarez, and other Latino/a authors who are U.S. citizens, Marta Caminero-Santangelo examines how writers are increasingly expressing their solidarity with undocumented immigrants. Through storytelling, these writers create a sense of community and peoplehood that includes non-citizen Latino/as. This volume also foregrounds the narratives of unauthorized migrants themselves, showing how they are emerging in the public sphere.
In this multifaceted issue, the voices are myriad: they challenge common interpretations of illegal immigration, explore the inevitable traumas and ethical dilemmas, protest their own silencing in immigration debates, or even capitalize on the topic for the commercial market. Yet these texts all seek to affect political discourse by advancing the possibility of empathy across lines of ethnicity or citizenship status.
As border enforcement strategies continue to escalate along with political rhetoric, detentions, and deaths, these counter-narratives are more significant than ever before and their perspectives cannot be ignored. What we are witnessing, argues Caminero-Santangelo, is a mass mobilization of stories. This growing body of literature is critical to understanding not only the Latino/a immigrant experience, but also alternative visions of nation and belonging.

"