Structure

Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen is divided into three parts plus a prologue and a note to readers. The three parts are each titled according to one of three universal elements of the undocumented immigrant experience: Lying, Passing, and Hiding. The sections are all of different lengths and feature chapters which vary in length as well. Part One is eight chapters, Part Two is twenty-one, and Part Three is twelve. This structure suggests that the meat of the story lies in Part Two, with Parts One and Three acting as narrative and thematic bookends. The majority of the chapters are quite short, at only a few pages, but there are a few significant ones which span ten pages or more.

Interestingly and unlike most books, the numbering of the chapters begins again with the start of each section, so that each section starts over with...