Remix: How Writer Karla Cornejo Villavicencio Maintains Control of Her Narrative

Latina to Latina

This week, we continue with one of our most beloved conversations with members of the new literary canon. 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 on instagram @karlarrriott.