Man, am I bitter I waited so long to read WE ARE HERE TO STAY: Voices of Undocumented Young Adults. It is a collection of real stories from a variety of undocumented immigrants - from their childhoods, to coming to the US, to the struggles of being undocumented, to their hopes for their futures.

While this book is painful to read, as it’s a reminder that the “American Dream” isn’t truly accessible to everyone, it also shows stories of resiliency and determination. Many of the authors got involved with activism and learned to become more open about their undocumented status, and many of them took advantage of the DACA program to help secure full-time jobs or attend college.

While it’s a quick read, it is thought provoking, humanizing, and put together well - definitely recommend.

CW // xenophobia; death and grief; immigration; trafficking; food insecurity; Mexican cartel; sexual assault

This is a great book to read to educate yourself. It gives you a perspective of what life is like to live on the edge and the repercussions if someone finds out the biggest secret of your life.

This book was a very inspiring and informative experience. Some stories surprised me. It was a great read.

Thank you Candlewick Press and Netgalley for this ARC.

This is a powerful, emotion inducing book which we can all benefit greatly from reading. Stories of Young People from different parts of the world and living in an unfamiliar country undocumented. This book invites the reader to gain some insight into these young lives and how decisions to move to the US have impacted them on many levels. Susan Kuklin’s book will surely invoke empathy and answer many questions that we may have often wondered.

Wow. Just wow. The powerful words of these undocumented young adults pulled at me. These are not people here looking for a free ride. They are not here because it is easy. Some had Monday in coming here. But here they are. The US is their home and they are fighting to stay here. This book gives a voice to our undocumented young adults and makes us face the reality of what it means to be them. Try stepping into their shoes.

This first hand account of the tribulations of immigration was both both poignant and informative. To hear personal stories through those that undertook them serves to highlight the damage being done to fellow human beings by enforcing archaic and harmful immigration policies.

I thought the choice to leave the frames with no photos was especially poignant and unsettling.

We Are Here to Stay: Voices of Undocumented Young Adults is a collection of experiences of undocumented students. WOW! These stories are not only eye-opening, but show how we need more kindness & compassion & laws to help these immigrants seeking a safe life in America with opportinities to get a good education, contribute to our society & thrive. This book makes it personal, giving voice to the fear, struggle, despair, and dreams for these YA.

A must read!

Thank you to the publisher for providing an ARC for review.

We Are Here To Stay is emotional, gripping and a very important read that should be mandatory reading for everyone. This book could open so many eyes and make people more sympathetic. The writing itself didn't blow me away, but in this case that didn't matter. It took me a while to read, but that's because of the heavy subject matter and my mindset right now, thus why it was sometimes difficult to pick it up again. Definitely not the book's fault!

This was a powerful book that forces you to rethink about yourself and how lucky you are. It also shows are strong these young adults are and that we should help them stay here because they really are part of the country.

This book amplifies the voices of young adults who arrived in the US undocumented. The accounts within are varied, honest, and very sad in some cases. The photography of the subjects is unfortunately not featured, due to changes in US legislation protecting their rights. Nevertheless, the accounts are incredibly powerful and moving.

I am very excited to see that WE ARE HERE TO STAY: VOICES OF UNDOCUMENTED YOUNG ADULTS by Susan Kuklin is being released today in the midst of National Migration Week as the discussion of a border wall continues. Kuklin (who also wrote Beyond Magenta) says, "it is my dream that that the stories of the nine young people in WE ARE HERE TO STAY will encourage and facilitate an informed and honest conversation about the complexities of immigration. It is also my hope that we can one day republish this book with the participants' names, places, and photographs fully intact."

Originally scheduled for publication in 2017, this book was put on hold due to proposed changes in DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). However, the young interviewees wanted to be able to tell their stories so it is being released. Kuklin includes many often lengthy discussions and quotes which make for an informative and sometimes heart-wrenching text. The nine young adults who tell their stories come from different places including Mexico, Ghana, Independent Samoa, and South Korea, but they all will inspire hope and empathy. They speak so honestly and freely about their feelings about living in America, making this an important book to read and one that helps personalize the situation.

In fact, Kirkus calls WE ARE HERE TO STAY "a must-read" and School Library Journal recommends it for grades 5 and up. Both note the usefulness of the timeline regarding immigration policies and the many resources (list of related books, documentaries, and websites) which are included. They, like the Toolkit supplied as part of National Migration Week, will indeed inspire conversation and action.

Links in Live post:
https://justiceforimmigrants.org/take-action/national-migration-week/
and the toolkit: https://justiceforimmigrants.org/2016site/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Final-NMW-Toolkit-2019.pdf

I don't have much to say about this. The title is pretty self-explanatory.
Nine Young-Adults talk about their journey to America and what happened once they got there. They come from all over and have one thing in common. At some point in their life, they were undocumented, or still are. There is also the story of a reverend that made it his mission to help people that come across a desert to get to the States.

Each story was touching in its own way. I can't begin to imagine what it must have been like for them, even after having read their testimonies. How we still put people through that is inconceivable to me. Btw, this should have had pictures of the Young Adults as well as their names but since Trump's administration ended DACA, they had to make it anonymous to protect themselves, in fear of deportation if they were found out. (Though I'm still not sure Trump can read.)
The spaces for the pictures were left empty and I found it all the more powerful.

This is definitely a must-read for anyone and everyone.

This is honest and heartbreaking. It’s a little confusing to read when they change perspectives and don’t use names. Other than that, it’s worth sticking with it because it’s a side that todays young adults need to understand. Some day soon students will be going to college with undocumented young adults or those who have grown up in refugee camps. This is an absolute must ready for empathy building and understanding.

Thank you to @netgalley and @candlewickpress for the advance Kindle copy of this 1.8.19 release. All opinions are my own.
•
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5 for this collection of young adults’ experiences as undocumented immigrants in America. The stories are brief but powerful. Some of the details are difficult to read, but I think this book belongs on all high school library shelves for sure, and I am weighing the idea adding it to my middle school collection as well.

Award-winning author and photographer Susan Kuklin conducted extensive interviews with nine undocumented young adults who all came here as children. They come from Colombia, Mexico, Ghana, Independent Samoa, and Korea, and they - and their families - came here for the chance at a better life and education. They fled poverty. They fled violence. They left family behind.

Originally slated for publication in 2017, Susan Kuklin originally planned to feature full-color portraits and the subjects' names in this book, but the Presidential election and subsequent repeal of DACA, makes it unsafe to identify these young adults. Identified only by a first initial and represented by empty frames, these are hard stories to read. They will move you: they will upset you, they will make you angry, and they will make you feel for the young people who live in the shadows, terrified that at any moment, they'll be sent away. They've crossed through hellish deserts, been taken advantage of by people that were supposed to help them, and turned away by their families in some cases. Working in their communities to bring about positive change, they are here, and they want to be part of the America we know we can be.

We Are Here to Stay offers a lot of food for thought and discussion. These individuals face an uncertain future, and they know it. We Are Here to Stay is a must-read, must-have book for young people everywhere, and it's a must-read for every person whose lives touch young people: parents, caregivers, educators.

Susan Kuklin is the Stonewall Honor-winning author of Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a free digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This book is filled with heartbreak and also hope. It is a series of essays that focuses on undocumented teenagers and their experiences. It is an important book because it tells the stories of children from all different countries and different situations of coming here, not just the stereotypical Mexican immigrant which is often associated with the term “undocumented.” It is an important read for many reasons. Understanding, empathy, and just the knowledge that these stories and situations exist in the United States. I recommend this book to everyone but the heaviness and seriousness of the stories make it more appropriate for young adults and adults.

We Are Here to Stay: Voices of Undocumented Young Adults is a collection of several different young immigrants's real-life stories. All the immigrants in this book are very different: they come from various countries, they have different cultures and backstories on how they came to be in the US. But all of them have one thing in common: for one reason or another they are now undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
All the events narrated in this book are very painful to read but also filled with hope and love for a country that definitely isn't easy to be a part of, no matter how much you want it.
Many of the immigrants in this book say to have taken the opportunity that the DACA program offered them and thanks to it they were able to either go to college and/or get a job.
This book gives an overview of the sensitive subject that the undocumented young adults represent. I found it very interesting and informative, I highly recommend it.

*I received a free copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.*

Rating: 5 out of 5

We Are Here to Stay tells the story of young, undocumented people in America, and it is both heartwrenching and uplifiting. These young people have such bright dreams and are working so hard to achieve success in their lives; I am inspired by them and am so glad to have been able to read their stories.

I love that this collection includes people from all kinds of different situations. We hear about the Mexican immigrants, which is the prevailing stereotype of what an undocumented person's experience is, but we also hear about someone who was tricked into coming here for human trafficking, and someone from Korea whose parent abandoned them after their visa expired. From this collection, you get a comprehensive picture of the sorts of varying situations undocumented people are in, and it is eye-opening.

This collection was at once sad and incredibly inspiring. I am in awe of these young people and also am grateful to know that there are other Americans who are trying to help these people and make sure they achieve success in their lives, but it is horrifying that they have to go through so much devastation and hardship.

I highly recommend this for anyone interested in the topic of immigration and for those who want to know from firsthand sources what it means to be an undocumented person in America. It's hard for me to say that I "enjoyed" this book because so much of this was heartbreaking, but I think it's an important collection about a topic that everyone in American should know more about.

<i>We Are Here to Stay: Voices of Undocumented Young Adults</i> by Susa Kuklin is heartbreaking. But it is also filled with so much hope. Detailing the accounts of several young immigrants’ lives, <i>We Are Here to Stay</i> is a collection of written experiences that does an amazing job of building a great deal of empathy with its readers. The experiences described are raw and painful, but they are also deeply inspiring. Each person has persevered through a great deal in a world that has set up numerous obstacles for them from the very start.

It truly tears me apart to know how immigrants have been treated by so many in the United States and more than once I found myself feeling horrible at all the things these young adults have been forced to deal with as a result. They are people, too. People with dreams and hopes. People who genuinely care about the world around them and the others in it. Knowing that many in this country work constantly to make the lives of these wonderful people more difficult kills me.

There is no question in my mind that this book is one that needs to be read, especially in the present circumstances. The administration currently in power is inhumane and despicable, so frankly the rest of the world really needs to develop some empathy. I think this book is a brilliant way to foster that empathy. <i>We Are Here to Stay</i> does so much in showing who immigrants truly are and how much they have been through, how hard they have to work to be accepted.

It shouldn’t be like that. They shouldn’t have been forced to deal with the horrors that they have. I hope that changes one day. For now, understand that these stories are important and no one should be treated the way this country continuously treats them. We can do better. We should do better.

This book is so hard to review. I was totally gripped by the stories of the young people in the book, and I would absolutely recommend this book to everyone. There are just no words to describe how important this book is.