Spare Parts

At the beginning of the book, the four Carl Hayden students are giving the technical presentation on their robot at the 2004 MATE Remotely Operated Vehicle Competition. Davis wastes no time in pointing out the large disparities between the students from Carl Hayden and the other students and teams with which they are competing, particularly regarding their race and their economic disparity. This quote begins the underdog narrative that Davis frames throughout, demonstrating the immense odds that the Carl Hayden students face in the competition. The way in which the two teams are described highlights the great amount of privilege afforded to the team from MIT, as it is given resources simply for being a prestigious institution. Additionally, as Davis will point out later, the MIT team is made up primarily of white students; the fact that the Carl Hayden students are Latino will also become a large part of the story as Davis demonstrates the additional challenges they face as a result of their background and their citizenship status. Framing the story in this way at such an early point makes it remarkable that the students are at the competition at all, and also makes their ultimate win in the competition even more moving.

After the students have impressed the judges with their technical presentation, Davis gives readers a little bit of insight into one of the judge’s thoughts. Lisa Spence, the flight lead at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, had gone to college at Arizona State University. Knowing the area in which the students live, Spence is surprised that such an impressive team has emerged from Carl Hayden Community High School. Spence’s observation of the ways in which the Carl Hayden students break from the norm posits the students’ differences as heralding a wave of the future, but the rest of Davis’s book and particularly its final part complicate that assumption. For while the students’ differences may make them more exceptional for overcoming an underprivileged background, for many people in the United States, their differences from the norm make them undesirable in American society and cause a lot of deep-seated prejudice.

Lorenzo has a hard time fitting in at school because he has an odd-shaped head, struggles at first to learn English, and wears his hair in a mullet. Because of this, instead of participating in extracurricular activities in middle school, Lorenzo watches his godfather Hugo in his makeshift auto repair shop. Though Hugo doesn’t let Lorenzo do much more than clean the tools, Lorenzo learns a lot simply from watching. This quote illuminates two of the major themes in the book. First, Hugo’s shop is what sparks some of Lorenzo’s interest in building things, while he simultaneously learns how to think outside the box and find creative solutions to problems. This ability becomes crucial to the robotics team later, as Lorenzo is able to work out solutions to some of the hardest tasks that their robot must complete. Additionally, the quote demonstrates how Lorenzo’s status as an outsider actually helps him; even though he doesn’t fit in, Lorenzo turns to Hugo’s shop, which ultimately allows the team to succeed in the competition.

Dean Kamen is a thirty-eight-year-old inventor who realizes that students have a hard time getting excited about the sciences when they have alternative entertainment like sporting events. He resolves to create an event that can garner the same amount of excitement. This keys into a question that runs throughout the book: how to get kids engaged in science and technology. In an attempt to ameliorate this situation, Kamen founds the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) competition in 1989, and the one that the Carl Hayden students attend in 2004 centers on building a robot that is able to play basketball. For the Carl Hayden students, many of them have an early curiosity about the sciences, but certainly putting math and science into a competition setting gives the kids a sense of adventure. This is why the FIRST competition catches Fredi’s eye; he knows that the students will not only have fun, but gain some valuable experience and learn a lot as they gear up for their next competition.

Lorenzo walks into Fredi’s Marine Science class as a sophomore, looking for a group to be a part of. When Fredi notices him lingering around the classroom, Fredi invites him to help take care of the fish, and Lorenzo is amazed that Fredi would trust him to help. Lorenzo and Fredi’s meeting becomes in many ways the perfect student-teacher match. Lorenzo has up until this point been treated as an outsider, an oddball, and an easy target for bullying. However, this gives him a unique perspective and an ability to come up with creative solutions to problems, particularly from watching his godfather Hugo work in his auto shop. All he needs is a little direction and a little confidence. Fredi, on the other hand, is a kind mentor looking for passionate kids, and sees that Lorenzo is simply a little lost and needs an authority figure who trusts and believes in him. Their collaboration shows the potential of any kid who considers themselves an outsider—but also how easily that potential could be lost without a good teacher, or a person who is invested in giving them hope for their future.

When Fredi and Allan initially discover the MATE competition, there are two classes of competitors that the kids can participate in: the Explorer Class, made up mostly of teams from colleges, and the Ranger Class, made up primarily of teams from high schools. They realize that the competition will be difficult for the students regardless of which class they enter, and they want to take care that the students aren’t completely devastated by the results. This highlights an underappreciated role of mentors: not only to give kids information or to make learning fun, but also to give the kids the confidence to know that they can be successful in their pursuits. In many ways, this is what makes the American Dream—or any dream—achievable, by a person having the confidence to pursue it. Even though Fredi and Allan enter the team into the Explorer class in order for the students to at least say they lost to MIT, their desire to give the kids the conviction that they can build a robot that could compete in the competition is what allows them to succeed in it.

When Lorenzo first joins the robotics team, he is so excited about it that he devotes most of his time to the club and falls behind on his other schoolwork. Fredi threatens that if he doesn’t get his grades up, he won’t be able to be on the team, and so he starts to work harder and harder in his other classes. The rest of the boys quickly follow suit. These developments establish the power one feels when one belongs in a group. Lorenzo is completely motivated by the group of kids that he has found, and so he works hard in school in order to make sure not to lose that community. But what is interesting is that he then inspires the other students to do the same. Thus, the team gives them a singular sense of purpose in winning the competition, but also a motivation that extends to every aspect of their lives as they try to be the best students and competitors that they can be.

Even after Lorenzo has found a sense of belonging with the robotics club, he is teased more and more throughout his sophomore year, until he punches another student in the face. While Lorenzo’s father offers to beat the student up for him, Fredi instead speaks to Lorenzo and advises him that if someone wants to fight him, he should pretend to have a seizure, lightening the tension. Fredi’s observation about Lorenzo’s need for someone to invest in him sums up some of the book’s attitudes about underdogs and mentorship. Lorenzo’s background means that he inherently has a lot of adversity to overcome (as Davis enumerates here, poverty and low expectations). Yet some of the things that make him an underdog also have to do with who he is as a person (his sweet demeanor, his unusual hairstyle), and these are the things that give him the unique and creative perspective that allows him to flourish on the robotics team. Additionally, his relationship with Fredi highlights how much kids, when faced with these kinds of societal obstacles, need a strong role model who can encourage them to believe in themselves, as Fredi does.

As the students start to build the parts of their robot that can complete the different assigned tasks, Oscar and Cristian tell Lorenzo that he should take on the task of extracting a liquid sample from a barrel underwater because they think it’s going to be impossible. Lorenzo works tirelessly, testing out different methods with a balloon, a sump pump, copper tubing, and various plastic containers to keep the balloon from falling over. When he finally accomplishes the task, Fredi is impressed and also exceptionally proud. Lorenzo’s creativity has paid off here, as he is able to discover cheap and easy solutions to a difficult assignment. In this way, the students’ lack of resources actually becomes an advantage: while MIT and other teams try to use technically complex equipment, Lorenzo’s cheap solution is effective and more practical. But perhaps most importantly, it is once again clear how valuable Fredi’s mentorship has been in giving Lorenzo the confidence to persist in finding these creative solutions—and Fredi, in turn, receives his own satisfaction from watching the kids achieve something they never thought they could.

Just a few weeks before the MATE competition, the four students glue their robot together. Though they had practiced multiple times, they quickly realize that they have an added difficulty because the robotics closet quickly fills with noxious fumes (which Lorenzo addresses by commenting that it’s “stinky” in the closet) from the glue that they are using. They have to work quickly as a team, and once they finish building the robot, they christen it “Stinky.” Stinky becomes a representation of two things: both their teamwork and their status as underdogs. It represents their teamwork because not only does it take all of them to assemble it in the closet, darting in and out and trying not to get high from the fumes, but it also takes all of them to contribute their own unique skills. Oscar and Luis worked on the motors, Cristian programs the robot’s computer, Lorenzo takes the liquid sampling project, and so on. Each one of them brings their own unique traits to the job, and it takes all of them to complete it.

Additionally, the robot represents their underdog status. As its name suggests, Stinky doesn’t quite appear to be in the same league as some of the robots it will compete against. It is cheaply made, gaudily painted, and constructed from spare parts. But at the same time, those factors make it both practical and a representation of the team’s creativity, as they have been able to take their lack of resources and turn it into a championship-winning robot.

After the students participate in the FIRST competition in Atlanta, Davis describes the ways in which they had formed a closer team and a closer friendship. They had learned how to solder and how to use a robot controller from competing in the competition, but they had also developed a technical shorthand and grown as friends on the trip. To the boys, and particularly to Lorenzo, this sense of belonging and camaraderie is perhaps even more vital to him than pursuing his interests. Here, Luis helps him avoid bullying, and the club makes him feel like he is no longer an outsider. This is perhaps Lorenzo’s greatest motivation in working hard for the team: he gains a sense of community as well. This is true not only of Lorenzo, as each one of the boys has gained a new team. Oscar had been looking for this specifically after the ROTC; Cristian wanted peers that enjoyed his interests and whom he considered smart; Luis wanted to find people that would not be intimidated by his size. And so, together, their mutual desire for friendship is what elevates the club as a whole as they are motivated by their desire to be on a team.

Just before the students are about to give their technical presentation at the MATE competition, Fredi and Allan encourage them to stop people on the street and talk about their robot so they can practice speaking about it. But the phenomenon that Davis describes here demonstrates how the competition allows the boys to move away from the negative stereotypes that may be surrounding them in Phoenix, and across the country. The robotics club provides them with the opportunity to form a new identity—to have an interest that helps to define them in a positive way. This is what makes their story so interesting when Davis writes about it in Wired: readers become particularly excited to cheer for underdogs who may not always feel supported by American citizens across the country. While these interactions serves as a turning point for the group in giving them the confidence to excel, they also become somewhat tragic given the end of the book, because they are not able to continue defining themselves by their interests: they are still labelled as criminals or illegal immigrants, and the country will not allow them to move past that designation.

At the MATE competition, the students take their robot to the practice pool, but it quickly stops responding to the controls—the day before it is supposed to compete in the underwater portion of the competition. As a result, Oscar stays up all night re-soldering the connections between the controller and the joysticks, and Lorenzo offered to stay up with him to help. This exchange serves as a turning point both in Lorenzo’s character and Oscar’s relationship to him. Whereas earlier in the year, Lorenzo hadn’t had enough commitment to make it on time to the actual competition, here he sees how vital it is to support his team member and put the extra effort in. Lorenzo’s newfound friendship with the other boys has motivated him to be more dedicated to the competition so that the other boys like him even more. In Oscar’s case, from his thoughts here, readers can see that in fact, Oscar does notice Lorenzo’s motivation and gains a lot of respect for his team member.

At the MATE competition’s awards ceremony, the judges announce that the Carl Hayden students have won the Design Elegance award. They are shocked, considering that other teams have much bigger budgets and robots made out of much more expensive and high-tech materials than their robot, Stinky. However, the judges point out that it was exactly this difference that had led them to award the boys with this honor. Thus, what had seemed like their greatest liability—their lack of resources and knowledge—had actually become their greatest asset, as they were forced to think creatively and come up with solutions that could be practical, cheap, and simple to execute (for example, Lorenzo’s solution to the water extraction task or the boys’ decision to use PVC pipes as their primary material). They also acknowledged that they didn’t know everything, and in asking for advice, also gained a lot of resources from people who were willing to help with their robot.

The students win the MATE competition in 2004; in 2005, Joshua Davis publishes an article about their victory. As a result, many readers have an outpouring of support for the students and they raise $120,000 in scholarships for the students. Yet there is still a huge amount  of tension between the two sides of the immigration debate. Even though many readers support the students, Davis points out that many Americans do not have the same reaction. This reader’s comment highlights how the discrimination against immigrants from a specific background it is at odds with some of the values that Americans claim to uphold. America often prides itself on being a nation that is made up of immigrants; yet, whenever a new group of people of a specific race, ethnicity, or nationality becomes the predominant type of immigrant, that group is almost always stereotyped and belittled. Yet immigrants, as this reader points out, have a lot to add to any country and often particularly thrive in the United States because of the country’s resources, and these students are no different. Even though they are young, given the right opportunity—given the American Dream—they could grow up to do great things.

At the end of the book, Davis describes how the movie adaptation of his Wired article ended with the awards ceremony at the 2004 MATE competition, effectively giving the characters in the movie a picture-perfect happy ending. But Davis points out here that the movie’s ending is an ending that eludes the students that it depicts, and that it is important not to gloss over the fact that the boys all struggled and continue to struggle with jobs and stability because of their immigration status. The movie version, Davis argues, allows viewers to feel satisfied and untroubled about the immigration system as it stands. However, in finishing his book by pointing out the difference between the movie and what happened in real life, Davis implies that it is necessary to be upset about the way in which the boys could not capitalize on the potential they had in high school. Only by informing American citizens about the direct impact that their votes have on the lives of undocumented immigrant kids around the country is it possible to change their minds, and hopefully one day allow those students to participate in the American Dream.

At the beginning of the book, the four Carl Hayden students are giving the technical presentation on their robot at the 2004 MATE Remotely Operated Vehicle Competition. Davis wastes no time in pointing out the large disparities between the students from Carl Hayden and the other students and teams with which they are competing, particularly regarding their race and their economic disparity. This quote begins the underdog narrative that Davis frames throughout, demonstrating the immense odds that the Carl Hayden students face in the competition. The way in which the two teams are described highlights the great amount of privilege afforded to the team from MIT, as it is given resources simply for being a prestigious institution. Additionally, as Davis will point out later, the MIT team is made up primarily of white students; the fact that the Carl Hayden students are Latino will also become a large part of the story as Davis demonstrates the additional challenges they face as a result of their background and their citizenship status. Framing the story in this way at such an early point makes it remarkable that the students are at the competition at all, and also makes their ultimate win in the competition even more moving.

After the students have impressed the judges with their technical presentation, Davis gives readers a little bit of insight into one of the judge’s thoughts. Lisa Spence, the flight lead at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, had gone to college at Arizona State University. Knowing the area in which the students live, Spence is surprised that such an impressive team has emerged from Carl Hayden Community High School. Spence’s observation of the ways in which the Carl Hayden students break from the norm posits the students’ differences as heralding a wave of the future, but the rest of Davis’s book and particularly its final part complicate that assumption. For while the students’ differences may make them more exceptional for overcoming an underprivileged background, for many people in the United States, their differences from the norm make them undesirable in American society and cause a lot of deep-seated prejudice.

Lorenzo has a hard time fitting in at school because he has an odd-shaped head, struggles at first to learn English, and wears his hair in a mullet. Because of this, instead of participating in extracurricular activities in middle school, Lorenzo watches his godfather Hugo in his makeshift auto repair shop. Though Hugo doesn’t let Lorenzo do much more than clean the tools, Lorenzo learns a lot simply from watching. This quote illuminates two of the major themes in the book. First, Hugo’s shop is what sparks some of Lorenzo’s interest in building things, while he simultaneously learns how to think outside the box and find creative solutions to problems. This ability becomes crucial to the robotics team later, as Lorenzo is able to work out solutions to some of the hardest tasks that their robot must complete. Additionally, the quote demonstrates how Lorenzo’s status as an outsider actually helps him; even though he doesn’t fit in, Lorenzo turns to Hugo’s shop, which ultimately allows the team to succeed in the competition.

Dean Kamen is a thirty-eight-year-old inventor who realizes that students have a hard time getting excited about the sciences when they have alternative entertainment like sporting events. He resolves to create an event that can garner the same amount of excitement. This keys into a question that runs throughout the book: how to get kids engaged in science and technology. In an attempt to ameliorate this situation, Kamen founds the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) competition in 1989, and the one that the Carl Hayden students attend in 2004 centers on building a robot that is able to play basketball. For the Carl Hayden students, many of them have an early curiosity about the sciences, but certainly putting math and science into a competition setting gives the kids a sense of adventure. This is why the FIRST competition catches Fredi’s eye; he knows that the students will not only have fun, but gain some valuable experience and learn a lot as they gear up for their next competition.

Lorenzo walks into Fredi’s Marine Science class as a sophomore, looking for a group to be a part of. When Fredi notices him lingering around the classroom, Fredi invites him to help take care of the fish, and Lorenzo is amazed that Fredi would trust him to help. Lorenzo and Fredi’s meeting becomes in many ways the perfect student-teacher match. Lorenzo has up until this point been treated as an outsider, an oddball, and an easy target for bullying. However, this gives him a unique perspective and an ability to come up with creative solutions to problems, particularly from watching his godfather Hugo work in his auto shop. All he needs is a little direction and a little confidence. Fredi, on the other hand, is a kind mentor looking for passionate kids, and sees that Lorenzo is simply a little lost and needs an authority figure who trusts and believes in him. Their collaboration shows the potential of any kid who considers themselves an outsider—but also how easily that potential could be lost without a good teacher, or a person who is invested in giving them hope for their future.

When Fredi and Allan initially discover the MATE competition, there are two classes of competitors that the kids can participate in: the Explorer Class, made up mostly of teams from colleges, and the Ranger Class, made up primarily of teams from high schools. They realize that the competition will be difficult for the students regardless of which class they enter, and they want to take care that the students aren’t completely devastated by the results. This highlights an underappreciated role of mentors: not only to give kids information or to make learning fun, but also to give the kids the confidence to know that they can be successful in their pursuits. In many ways, this is what makes the American Dream—or any dream—achievable, by a person having the confidence to pursue it. Even though Fredi and Allan enter the team into the Explorer class in order for the students to at least say they lost to MIT, their desire to give the kids the conviction that they can build a robot that could compete in the competition is what allows them to succeed in it.

When Lorenzo first joins the robotics team, he is so excited about it that he devotes most of his time to the club and falls behind on his other schoolwork. Fredi threatens that if he doesn’t get his grades up, he won’t be able to be on the team, and so he starts to work harder and harder in his other classes. The rest of the boys quickly follow suit. These developments establish the power one feels when one belongs in a group. Lorenzo is completely motivated by the group of kids that he has found, and so he works hard in school in order to make sure not to lose that community. But what is interesting is that he then inspires the other students to do the same. Thus, the team gives them a singular sense of purpose in winning the competition, but also a motivation that extends to every aspect of their lives as they try to be the best students and competitors that they can be.

Even after Lorenzo has found a sense of belonging with the robotics club, he is teased more and more throughout his sophomore year, until he punches another student in the face. While Lorenzo’s father offers to beat the student up for him, Fredi instead speaks to Lorenzo and advises him that if someone wants to fight him, he should pretend to have a seizure, lightening the tension. Fredi’s observation about Lorenzo’s need for someone to invest in him sums up some of the book’s attitudes about underdogs and mentorship. Lorenzo’s background means that he inherently has a lot of adversity to overcome (as Davis enumerates here, poverty and low expectations). Yet some of the things that make him an underdog also have to do with who he is as a person (his sweet demeanor, his unusual hairstyle), and these are the things that give him the unique and creative perspective that allows him to flourish on the robotics team. Additionally, his relationship with Fredi highlights how much kids, when faced with these kinds of societal obstacles, need a strong role model who can encourage them to believe in themselves, as Fredi does.

As the students start to build the parts of their robot that can complete the different assigned tasks, Oscar and Cristian tell Lorenzo that he should take on the task of extracting a liquid sample from a barrel underwater because they think it’s going to be impossible. Lorenzo works tirelessly, testing out different methods with a balloon, a sump pump, copper tubing, and various plastic containers to keep the balloon from falling over. When he finally accomplishes the task, Fredi is impressed and also exceptionally proud. Lorenzo’s creativity has paid off here, as he is able to discover cheap and easy solutions to a difficult assignment. In this way, the students’ lack of resources actually becomes an advantage: while MIT and other teams try to use technically complex equipment, Lorenzo’s cheap solution is effective and more practical. But perhaps most importantly, it is once again clear how valuable Fredi’s mentorship has been in giving Lorenzo the confidence to persist in finding these creative solutions—and Fredi, in turn, receives his own satisfaction from watching the kids achieve something they never thought they could.

Just a few weeks before the MATE competition, the four students glue their robot together. Though they had practiced multiple times, they quickly realize that they have an added difficulty because the robotics closet quickly fills with noxious fumes (which Lorenzo addresses by commenting that it’s “stinky” in the closet) from the glue that they are using. They have to work quickly as a team, and once they finish building the robot, they christen it “Stinky.” Stinky becomes a representation of two things: both their teamwork and their status as underdogs. It represents their teamwork because not only does it take all of them to assemble it in the closet, darting in and out and trying not to get high from the fumes, but it also takes all of them to contribute their own unique skills. Oscar and Luis worked on the motors, Cristian programs the robot’s computer, Lorenzo takes the liquid sampling project, and so on. Each one of them brings their own unique traits to the job, and it takes all of them to complete it.

Additionally, the robot represents their underdog status. As its name suggests, Stinky doesn’t quite appear to be in the same league as some of the robots it will compete against. It is cheaply made, gaudily painted, and constructed from spare parts. But at the same time, those factors make it both practical and a representation of the team’s creativity, as they have been able to take their lack of resources and turn it into a championship-winning robot.

After the students participate in the FIRST competition in Atlanta, Davis describes the ways in which they had formed a closer team and a closer friendship. They had learned how to solder and how to use a robot controller from competing in the competition, but they had also developed a technical shorthand and grown as friends on the trip. To the boys, and particularly to Lorenzo, this sense of belonging and camaraderie is perhaps even more vital to him than pursuing his interests. Here, Luis helps him avoid bullying, and the club makes him feel like he is no longer an outsider. This is perhaps Lorenzo’s greatest motivation in working hard for the team: he gains a sense of community as well. This is true not only of Lorenzo, as each one of the boys has gained a new team. Oscar had been looking for this specifically after the ROTC; Cristian wanted peers that enjoyed his interests and whom he considered smart; Luis wanted to find people that would not be intimidated by his size. And so, together, their mutual desire for friendship is what elevates the club as a whole as they are motivated by their desire to be on a team.

Just before the students are about to give their technical presentation at the MATE competition, Fredi and Allan encourage them to stop people on the street and talk about their robot so they can practice speaking about it. But the phenomenon that Davis describes here demonstrates how the competition allows the boys to move away from the negative stereotypes that may be surrounding them in Phoenix, and across the country. The robotics club provides them with the opportunity to form a new identity—to have an interest that helps to define them in a positive way. This is what makes their story so interesting when Davis writes about it in Wired: readers become particularly excited to cheer for underdogs who may not always feel supported by American citizens across the country. While these interactions serves as a turning point for the group in giving them the confidence to excel, they also become somewhat tragic given the end of the book, because they are not able to continue defining themselves by their interests: they are still labelled as criminals or illegal immigrants, and the country will not allow them to move past that designation.

At the MATE competition, the students take their robot to the practice pool, but it quickly stops responding to the controls—the day before it is supposed to compete in the underwater portion of the competition. As a result, Oscar stays up all night re-soldering the connections between the controller and the joysticks, and Lorenzo offered to stay up with him to help. This exchange serves as a turning point both in Lorenzo’s character and Oscar’s relationship to him. Whereas earlier in the year, Lorenzo hadn’t had enough commitment to make it on time to the actual competition, here he sees how vital it is to support his team member and put the extra effort in. Lorenzo’s newfound friendship with the other boys has motivated him to be more dedicated to the competition so that the other boys like him even more. In Oscar’s case, from his thoughts here, readers can see that in fact, Oscar does notice Lorenzo’s motivation and gains a lot of respect for his team member.

At the MATE competition’s awards ceremony, the judges announce that the Carl Hayden students have won the Design Elegance award. They are shocked, considering that other teams have much bigger budgets and robots made out of much more expensive and high-tech materials than their robot, Stinky. However, the judges point out that it was exactly this difference that had led them to award the boys with this honor. Thus, what had seemed like their greatest liability—their lack of resources and knowledge—had actually become their greatest asset, as they were forced to think creatively and come up with solutions that could be practical, cheap, and simple to execute (for example, Lorenzo’s solution to the water extraction task or the boys’ decision to use PVC pipes as their primary material). They also acknowledged that they didn’t know everything, and in asking for advice, also gained a lot of resources from people who were willing to help with their robot.

The students win the MATE competition in 2004; in 2005, Joshua Davis publishes an article about their victory. As a result, many readers have an outpouring of support for the students and they raise $120,000 in scholarships for the students. Yet there is still a huge amount  of tension between the two sides of the immigration debate. Even though many readers support the students, Davis points out that many Americans do not have the same reaction. This reader’s comment highlights how the discrimination against immigrants from a specific background it is at odds with some of the values that Americans claim to uphold. America often prides itself on being a nation that is made up of immigrants; yet, whenever a new group of people of a specific race, ethnicity, or nationality becomes the predominant type of immigrant, that group is almost always stereotyped and belittled. Yet immigrants, as this reader points out, have a lot to add to any country and often particularly thrive in the United States because of the country’s resources, and these students are no different. Even though they are young, given the right opportunity—given the American Dream—they could grow up to do great things.

At the end of the book, Davis describes how the movie adaptation of his Wired article ended with the awards ceremony at the 2004 MATE competition, effectively giving the characters in the movie a picture-perfect happy ending. But Davis points out here that the movie’s ending is an ending that eludes the students that it depicts, and that it is important not to gloss over the fact that the boys all struggled and continue to struggle with jobs and stability because of their immigration status. The movie version, Davis argues, allows viewers to feel satisfied and untroubled about the immigration system as it stands. However, in finishing his book by pointing out the difference between the movie and what happened in real life, Davis implies that it is necessary to be upset about the way in which the boys could not capitalize on the potential they had in high school. Only by informing American citizens about the direct impact that their votes have on the lives of undocumented immigrant kids around the country is it possible to change their minds, and hopefully one day allow those students to participate in the American Dream.