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Prologue
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Dear America, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Citizenship, Belonging, and Identity
Family, Love, and Intimacy
Immigration Politics and Policy
Journalism, Storytelling, and the Power of Truth
Summary
Analysis
Vargas’s family is full of gamblers—and they gambled on his future by sending him from the Philippines to the U.S. His mother was supposed to follow him. And they were inseparable: she dedicated all her time to raising him. She took him to the airport early in the morning, sent him with a man she called his uncle, and gave him a jacket in case the U.S. was cold. From the airplane window, Vargas saw how water swallowed up the islands of his country. In the U.S., Vargas never goes into the water—not even at the beach. Ever since he left home in 1993, at 12 years old, water has separated him from his mother.
As a child, Vargas was too young to understand the significance of leaving the Philippines. But in retrospect, his nostalgia and sense of loss are clear. Migration cut him off from his mother and native country, against his will and with no prior warning. But it has also given him benefits, which is why it’s a gamble. In fact, he returns to this idea at the end of the book, when he again questions whether migrating to the U.S. was worth it at all. Water has come to represent his loss, and the vast Pacific Ocean swallowing up the Philippines represents the way that his journey overwhelmed him.
Themes
