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
“Coming out,” Vargas writes, is really “more about letting people in.” For years, he kept his biological family, his family of white mentors, and his friends totally separate. He decided to bring everyone together at his thirtieth birthday party, at an Indian restaurant in San Francisco. Thirty people attended. Lola, Uncle Rolan, and many other relatives were there. So were Pat Hyland, Jim Strand, Rich Fischer and his wife Sheri, and Mary Moore and her daughter Daisy. And so were his friends and editors, including Teresa Moore and his Washington Post editor Marcia Davis.
When Vargas came out as undocumented to the people in his personal life, he was finally able to bring them all together for the first time. His birthday celebration made it clear that, even if he tended to feel isolated and unloved in the past, he really did have a community of people who loved him. When he decided to stop lying, passing, and hiding around these people, he could finally be open and authentic with them again.
Themes
At the party, Vargas realized that compartmentalizing his life was a mistake. When he saw his guests all together, he realized that he did belong somewhere. Unfortunately, some people were missing. Lolo had died four months before, but he and Vargas reconciled before his death. Vargas’s father was also dying of cancer in Manila. Relatives he didn’t know called to ask for money for the funeral expenses. Vargas was angry, but he knew that it was right to help out.
While Vargas had spent years trying to belong in the U.S. by filling other people’s expectations, at his party he realized that he would only truly belong in his community when he simply decided to be himself. But even as he understood how valuable his relationships and community were, he also recognized that he could never fully reverse the more fundamental damage of his severed ties with his family in the Philippines.
Themes
