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Part 1, Chapter 2: The Wrong Country
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
When he got to middle school, Vargas thought that the national anthem started, “Oh, Jose, can you see?” Needless to say, he stood out from his peers. He didn’t speak English, and everyone noticed his strong, sharp Tagalog accent. They noticed his unusual lunch food and the way he ran the wrong way during flag football. Once, he even told his classmates about Rambo, his favorite dog at home—before explaining how Rambo got turned into stew for his mother’s birthday.
Vargas’s struggle to fit in at school bothered him because it reminded him that he was a foreigner and suggested that he didn’t belong in the United States. While the wide gap between Filipino and American culture was often a source of humor, he learned that the best way to fit in was by distancing himself from his native culture and imitating the American students who surrounded him instead.
Themes
Vargas didn’t understand much about America, but he was excited to learn. He wrote letters to his Mama as often as he could, showing off his new American slang and explaining his school schedule. They missed each other, and he wanted to do well in school to make her proud (and blend in). But now, rereading his letters more than twenty years later, Vargas doesn’t recognize his childhood self. When they are separated, families learn to bury their emotions and lose the ability to love each other in the same innocent way as they used to.
Vargas still hadn’t faced the full trauma of his move to the U.S.: he still thought that his mother would be following him to the U.S., and he didn’t yet know he was undocumented. Thus, his love for his mother looks tragic in retrospect, because the reader knows that he still has not been able to see her, more than two decades after writing these letters. Writing in the present, Vargas suggests that the pain of this separation has challenged his ability to fully feel and process his emotions at all. But he will also point out that it doesn’t have to be this way—the U.S. government has chosen to enact immigration policies that needlessly keep people apart.
Themes
