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“Dear America” Book Group in Collaboration with LitNet – Part Two of Two

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Session Two: Tuesday, June 27, 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Participants will have read the book and Tom Verdi (LitNet Tutor) will lead a guided discussion about the book/topic.

 

Tom Verdi is a retired social worker who is currently an adjunct faculty member and academic advisor at Elms College BSW program in the Berkshires. He is also a LitNet volunteer working with 2 young Colombian students and volunteers at Volunteers in Medicine 2x/week, providing behavioral health counseling to an immigrant population adjusting to this new culture and way of life. He is presently working on a joint presentation with Fernando to area social workers entitled “ Living with Fear: The emotional health of those living without documentation.”

 

About the book, Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen:

Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, called “the most famous undocumented immigrant in America,” tackles one of the defining issues of our time in this explosive and deeply personal call to arms.

“This is not a book about the politics of immigration. This book––at its core––is not about immigration at all. This book is about homelessness, not in a traditional sense, but in the unsettled, unmoored psychological state that undocumented immigrants like myself find ourselves in. This book is about lying and being forced to lie to get by; about passing as an American and as a contributing citizen; about families, keeping them together, and having to make new ones when you can’t. This book is about constantly hiding from the government and, in the process, hiding from ourselves. This book is about what it means to not have a home.

After 25 years of living illegally in a country that does not consider me one of its own, this book is the closest thing I have to freedom.”

—Jose Antonio Vargas, from Dear America