Jose Antonio Vargas is a journalist, filmmaker, and author of the book Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen. He came to the US from the Philippines when he was twelve years old, and he didn’t discover he was undocumented until he was sixteen. We talk with him about his unique perspective on America and what it means to be a citizen.

Show notes:

• How many books have you read? Check out BPL’s full list of 250 books that influenced America, then check out our booklist with all the titles Jose mentioned in this episode.
• Read the 2011 New York Times essay in which Jose came out as undocumented and learn more about his organization, Define American.
• Watch the rest of Angela Davis’s talk at BPL’s 2026 Kahn Humanities series. 
• Want more interviews with authors on BPL’s 250 for 250 list? We talked to Maia Kobabe (author of Gender Queer), Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States), Art Spiegelman (author of Maus), N.K. Jemisin (author of The Fifth Season), and George M. Johnson (author of All Boys Aren’t Blue).