December 22, 2020
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Karla Cornejo Villavicencio at her home in New Haven. (Photo credit: Nathan Bajar)
After the U.S. presidential election of 2016, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, an undocumented American from Ecuador and Yale doctoral student, decided it was time to write her story. Beyond that, she wanted to write the story of other undocumented immigrants who play such an important part in American society but whose lives are often little understood.
The result is “The Undocumented Americans,” published in March, which captures the day-to-day lives and resilience of undocumented laborers she met across the country. The book was recently named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review and was among 17 books listed by former President Obama as his favorites from 2020.
A book review rarely leads to a segment on
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams, but that’s what happened to Nate Marshall last month. I love how he combines a traditional review with a personal essay a hybrid form that has become my favorite subgenre of criticism.
“The presidential memoir so often falls flat because it works against the strengths of the memoir form. Rather than take a slice of one’s life to lay bare and come to a revelation about the self or the world, the presidential memoir seeks to take the sum of a life to defend one’s actions. These sorts of memoirs are an attempt maybe not to rewrite history, but to situate history in the most rosy frame. It is by nature defensive and in this book, we see Obama’s primary defensive tool, his prodigious mind and proclivity toward over-considering every detail.”
傅高义之子授权澎湃刊发其手书讣告：愿洞察每个国家的优点_新闻_腾讯网 qq.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from qq.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
If “culture” means new books, new exhibitions, new music and cinema and so on, 2020 was a good year for culture. Defined almost any other way, 2020 was a terrible year for culture as it was for pretty much everything else. As I think about 2020, what I immediately remember about the last 346 days isn’t culture at all. Somehow, I doubt I’m the only one.
When I’ve talked about the quarantine with my friends, the one thing we’ve all agreed on is that time worked differently: This has been the longest year of our lives, and also one of the shortest. “Don’t think of it as waiting!” someone told me long ago. This was good advice at the time (our ride was late), but how else was I supposed to think of “it” this year? I waited to buy food, I waited to send mail, I waited hours to get tested for a cureless disease and then I waited weeks to get the results of my test. I waited in lines and read or pretended to read; one time I sneezed and people reacted as if a bomb h
Frances McDormand to star in, produce Women Talking adaptation dailyexcelsior.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dailyexcelsior.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.