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Part 3, Chapter 3: Distant Intimacy
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
Just before President Trump’s inauguration, Vargas’s doorman and one of his lawyer friends suggested he think about moving out, so that he wouldn’t be so easy to find. Other lawyer friends suggested he avoid flying, and one even suggested he move to Canada. He seriously considered it—he looked for apartments in Toronto, made plans to run Define American from abroad, and told his beloved Aunt Gladys. His family also knew that he wouldn’t be safe in the Philippines, where President Rodrigo Duterte was persecuting journalists.
Trump’s election shows that Vargas’s future in the U.S. is never secure (and likely never will be). His life became far riskier overnight. Of course, it’s symbolically significant that he had to literally give up his home in order to stay in the U.S. On one level, this parallels the way he gave up the Philippines and his mother to go to the U.S. But more importantly, it also represents the way he has felt about the U.S. during his entire life there: in order to stay in the country for now, he has to sacrifice the certainty and stability that he would need in order to build a home and community in the long term.
Themes
Just after he turned 36, Vargas got an email from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office, inviting him to Congress. His lawyer friends told him not to go—one, Alida Garcia, even wrote him a long email listing all the dangers he would face.
Pelosi’s invitation again forced Vargas to weigh his personal safety against his sense of obligation to others and his nation. He had to ask himself if the chance to speak the truth in a public forum and possibly influence legislation would be worth the risk of being arrested and deported on the Capitol grounds.
Themes
