Undocumented: A Worker's Fight

Undocumented: A Worker's Fight is a timely, interactive work of art meant to catch the eye of older readers, with a pull-out, accordion-fold format that refers back to ancient Mixtec codices.
 
"You don't know our names but you've seen us. In this country we build houses, we harvest crops, we cook, we clean, and we raise children. Some people want to kick us out and some act like we don't exist, but we are here, compañeros."
 
Juan was born in a small village in Mexico where the spoken language isn't Spanish, but Mixteco. Before Juan turned 18, he made two trips across the United States/Mexico border. The first time, the migras caught him and beat him. Duncan Tonatiuh's accompanying illustration is dark, depicting Juan being beaten bloody by a group of identical, white border patrol agents. The second time, Juan made it across and was brought to "a strange city."
 
Juan finds a job in a restaurant where he works "for years--twelve hours a day, seven days a week." His boss tells Juan that he is doing him a favor, hiring him without any paperwork. But, eventually, thanks to the nudging of a Chinese coworker, he realizes that the boss is actually taking advantage of him. "[I]t's not fair," the coworker says to Juan, "that they are paying us so little.... We work hard. We deserve to be paid right!"
 
What follows is the difficult, frustrating, tedious path undocumented workers must often take in order to receive acceptable wages: a legal counselor gets involved and the restaurant's undocumented workers take a stand. Undocumented, featuring multi-award winning author/illustrator Tonatiuh's (The Princess and the Warrior) vibrant, stylized illustrations, is an all-too-real discussion about fair pay and the hostility U.S. citizens often display toward undocumented immigrants. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor
Powered by: Xtenit