The Making of a Dream

This audiobook reports on the young activists who are engaged in holding lawmakers to the promises made in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy (DACA). Almarie Guerra invests her narration with a judicious balance of formality and personality. The author's presentations of the subjects' backstories--from their childhoods through their political engagement as young adults--are easy to follow. Guerra adjusts her pacing so that factual details as well as individual opinions, emotions, and thoughts all receive respectful attention. Her steady pace neither hurries nor drags as passages move from descriptions of activism to the challenges of living in a near-permanent state of limbo. In examining what looks like state-sanctioned terrorizing of vulnerable individuals, Guerra makes these lives real without histrionics. F.M.R.G. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

March 26, 2018
Journalist Wides-Muñoz movingly traces the 12 years of attempted legislation and political activism that culminated in the DREAM Act, focusing on the remarkable, and remarkably common, stories of several youths affected by its central feature: a path toward permanent citizenship for people brought illegally to the U.S. as children. During the decade-long fight, her subjects grew up, went off to college, got married, and had children, watching and protesting as the legislation started and stalled. They organized a 1,500-mile walk to raise awareness for their cause, orchestrated lengthy sit-ins, and pushed President Obama to deliver on his campaign promises. The injustices Wides-Muñoz details are wrenching: an undocumented immigrant worried that calling an ambulance in a medical emergency would result in deportation; a daughter could not visit her father in an immigrant detention center lest she too be investigated; a mother was pulled over in a routine traffic stop and deportation proceedings were begun immediately. But there are uplifting moments as well, particularly in Brazilian-born Felipe Sousa’s journey, as he struggled to accept that he was gay before finding a partner in the immigration reform movement. With the DREAM Act’s fate currently uncertain, this is a timely look at a contentious issue.

February 15, 2018

Journalist Wides-Munoz tells of the plight of DREAMers, undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as minors. Through no fault of their own, and often without their knowledge, they became undocumented American children who lived under the radar until they realized that they couldn't apply for driver's licenses, work permits, or college. She follows five activist DREAMers who risked coming out of the shadows, emboldened by both hope and disillusionment, to speak out about the status of the DREAM Act (introduced in 2001), and later, DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). Each individual's moving story is interwoven with the history of the controversial and political DREAM Act, which could place them on the path to citizenship. Despite personal and family difficulties and the constant threat of detention and deportation to unfamiliar native countries, they have organized, mobilized, lobbied, built coalitions, and resorted to bold tactics to raise awareness and gain allies. Meanwhile, they hope for comprehensive immigration reform to improve the lives of all immigrants. VERDICT This inspiring, well-written, well-documented account is an important read for Americans on all sides of this lingering issue.--Margaret Kappanadze, Elmira Coll. Lib., NY

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2018

Wides-Muñoz follows the personal accounts of a handful of undocumented young people, tracing their arrival in the United States, their school years, and how and why they turned to activism for immigration rights. A longtime AP reporter, she offers a deep but engaging history of recent immigration issues and policy-both within the immigration rights movement and the halls of power in Washington, DC. Touching on the changes to immigration law while Ronald Reagan was in office, the narrative moves to the beginnings of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. First proposed during George W. Bush's administration, the bill would have granted residency to certain undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as minors, but political priorities changed after September 11. The bulk of the volume covers immigration issues under Barack Obama-the resurrection of the DREAM Act and the protest tactics and legislative goals of different immigrant rights groups. The final chapter introduces some of the changes that occurred during the first year of Donald Trump's presidency. Of note, the author addresses issues that have gone unexplored in the national discourse, such as the emotional and physical toll of years of activism. She also discusses the guilt that many feel about Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, as it potentially grants young people legal status but leaves their parents unprotected. VERDICT A compelling, eye-opening work; recommended for all collections.-Jennifer Rothschild, Arlington County Public Libraries, VA

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 15, 2018
An eye-opening exploration of the DREAM Act and those who have tried to find safe harbor in the United States under its aegis.Relating her often poignant narrative through tales of aspiring citizens such as a Bolivian immigrant who arrived as a child, remained illegally, and has since become a leading activist in immigration-related causes, Wides-Munoz, the vice president for special projects and editorial strategy at Fusion TV, examines changes in legislation and the national mood alike over the last 20 years. The DREAM Act, she writes, was the outgrowth of a George W. Bush-era series of legislative efforts to make it more difficult for so-called illegal aliens to find a path to legal permanent residence and even citizenship. The "Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act," born of an unlikely alliance between Sens. Dick Durbin and Orrin Hatch, recognized that children brought to this country illegally were not willful criminals and therefore not deserving of punishments such as being denied educational opportunities. The story is full of ironies: the postal worker who discovered anthrax in the mail had long overstayed a tourist visa, while "the second US casualty in the [Iraq] war turned out to be a young man from Guatemala who had crossed the California border illegally." After 9/11, writes Wides-Munoz, efforts to improve the status of DREAMers were put on the back burner. During the Obama administration, those efforts were halfhearted enough that Hispanic voters "sat out the 2010 election in greater numbers than white or black voters," to disastrous results for the Democrats in the face of the tea party onslaught that would go on to put Donald Trump, an avowed opponent of the act and of immigration, in the White House. Against that new tide of anti-immigrant sentiment, the book concludes, the DREAM Act may be doomed despite efforts in the Senate to initiate meaningful immigration reform.A well-crafted, timely contribution to the immigration debate.

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February 1, 2018
Award-winning journalist Wides-Munoz's essential primer on the DREAM Act exposes the toll the U.S.'s broken immigration system takes on real people. As this legislation remains in hostage to political paralysis on Capitol Hill, the lives of undocumented young people brought to the U.S. as children, the so-called DREAMers, are left suspended in excruciating limbo. Wides-Munoz weaves the experiences and life stories of a handful of these exceptional young people into her informative account of the tortuously frustrating and heartbreaking attempts at achieving immigration reform in the twenty-first century. Besides the DREAMers and their families, her well-developed cast of characters includes key legislators, young immigration activists, advocates, and organizations. Wides-Munoz's sometimes-wonky prose can intermittently belie the passionate story she tells, yet this is a valuable and detailed look at lawmaking and policy that affect people and communities across the nation and around the world as well as portraits of heroic youth willing to put their own status in jeopardy to advocate for fair treatment, not only for themselves and their families but for all immigrants.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)