>> hall. >> my memoir makes several contributions to the conversation and the very first is how undocumented immigrants already contribute so much in all walks of life. with the unfortunate experience to some of the best educational institutions in the country but to be at i level whose contributions are being sidelined or marginalized. i am not thinking solely like donald trump but i am thinking of the conversation the polls around undocumented immigrants to be a legal beyond the power of the law to engage in this conversation for many different communities in all walks of life and are really poor ways to to make the long term contribution if we allow them to have legal status not to be in a marginal rise system. >> host: that lacked of status the you had a growing up to find you. in the background music of your life. talk about the beginning of your life here in new york at age four with seven english are some spanish with the dominican republic what was your experience? >> my first memory is the sense of discovery with the realization that was much different but oil by little i begin to learn what the implications were so with my parents of it came out something peculiar or not quite right about our situation even though i was five for six or seven to piece together the scraps of conversation and vendors to is something was going on the they could not have regular worked i think of my subway rides and walking those memories are in full traded with a sense of the anxiety and foreboding that they could not get employment they could not pay the rent we had to keep moving so that had a sense of unease. >> host: in your father decided he could no longer produce a living that he wanted didn't new york can get steady employment so he went back to the dominican republic by your mom's decision to keep you and your yogurt brother here. she told me when she talked your kindergarten teacher to learned how well you we're doing that was one aspect that made her decide behalf to keep the family hear. talk about that fateful decision despite being undocumented. >> guest: is the fault over several years initially it was a conversation between my mommy and my dad were they learn to our is really taking to kindergarten i had several teachers a couple of the bronx then entering year and first grade there were conversations of 51st grade teacher a and one thing that came out was not only was i in joining the class but the process of learning english and i was taken with the possibility and i embrace it. so my mom was inspired it would be great for my children to have a u.s. education to be exposed to the range of opportunities available but my dad was very worried because one of the difficulties that presented itself was despite that issued not to secure steady employment and that consequence not to support us the way he wanted to eventually he said he wanted to return and she said no progress think we should stay if you want to go that is fine and i will stay with the kids we will forge a life of an hour of and i will make kids of my children have the very best educational opportunities available to them here. >> host: if not for her decision we would not be here today to ever resent that decision because it made life so difficult to? >> and harte -- hindsight. and i couldn't fully implicate that process i did not know if and when. i didn't know at the time with the determination she conveyed to my father the every wednesday no matter what will the with the passage of time nothing would make her bed and somehow in us she saw something that led us to believe despite the obstacles to transition that we could overcome with the help of the educational opportunities to forge a new life that alliance the provision of all we could accomplish. >> host: at the same time you were in shelters at chinatown at every turn you are finding books to make them part of your world whether dumpsters or finding books that was life changing. talk about how we lived in ancient greece and rome. what did that say to you as a nine year-old child? >> as you mentioned i have the attachment for books for the field of books and reading them from an early age my parents were insistence that their children read but it began to manifest itself in a curious way when i was six years old because he didn't have money to balance the books are on the street and want to take them home when we moved into the shelter system and spent time at the library. initial a i was sticking a pin storybooks or the country's better wanted have to travel to the nassau halt agent people would live their enrollment and the this was a world completely now like the one that i knew there were no people from contemporary new york who lived this way that spoke these languages. >> host: there could be somebody. [laughter] >> we would never know but it gave me a sense of what a legacy may be about the cultural legacy transmitted from the culture to our own culture in fact, to say what does this mean? that affected the study of ancient history and latin and greek to help put me on the path to become a pacifist. >> host: that is amazing that now you are an academics, you have chosen a discipline that is not only rare and some would say dying but it is pretty esoteric so what you love about the classics? how do they speak to you even to this day? >> and of several things with various aspects of my involvement to proceed in a linear way. >> host: linear meaning? virgil? >> at the earliest age are was fascinated with the languages says blood dash because of higher teaching of this wonderful teacher i had that learning of languages allow me to approach the ancient authors still today such as poetry or learned of the pros but then i learned what was becoming more compelling the realization of the classics that allow you to work with many different kinds of materials. for me to go down all the different rabid holes but you have to think of culture and the ruins of the civilization and think about what it means to study history and what makes something 2,000 years ago that different? how to measure time? to see how the legacy incorporates so much of what we do now. to do engagements in that tradition how in the dominican republic there was a preoccupation with the greek and roman path to shape discourse this is what i hope to convey to my students. >> errant i know we had questions maybe you could tell about the operation and what they said about 4% how you relate to that today? >> in my teenage years and was far and to copy down a cool cat even if i could not figure out what it was but i would try a to make my way through the histories of the pauly planation war low ashley polynesian war and i wanted to know why? i guess i should read this though there were some fantastic evolution but the speech delivered by pericles' at the beginning one of the things is what makes athens so special or what makes sparta not special healing for her son the idea that it does not support four daughters of course, part of was noted the ancient world to involve in the occasional deportations but there was so much more that resonated with me even since been so pericles talks of the love the things of the mind so for someone at that point in time for that identity to revolve around that matters a great deal so as to think about how it reflected the better at understanding the things that matter is that was thrown into a nonsense of false said. >> host: i feel i was then us seminar we have so much to do talk about you have so much to teach everybody from history to philosophy or agent greece it is very fun not to mention baseball. but you talk about being intellectual view or a teenager and also living in the area that is not known for intellectual pursuits as a lot of your friends don't appreciate your intellectualism. how do you bridge the two worlds? we have got to new to the collegiate said the in the thai school because of a scholarship because of your reading of history books year recommended by a in an art teacher of your also commuting between the two worlds per rollout you do that? do you take off the cape? have you rectify your personality is? >> at the nuts and bolts level i was worried to be walking around in a blazer and a tie in my neighborhood that i would get jumped so every time i walked to the subway station by would make sure not to have on my tie then when i came back and got off at the station before walking home i would take off. but in addition it was the idea of how wide begin to understand my own aspirations against the backdrop of my a traveling between the two worlds so i realized collegiate the special place that i fell in love with puts tremendous emphasis on out word intellectualism. you have to show you read the book did their knowledgeable enough you couldn't be too ostentatious so you have to calibrate your presentation if you were just off the cuff but incidentally i would pick gap but then you couldn't come up to your friend to say i've read that last night because they bled locule. -- they would mock you. but the key was to have to say it is a particular way it isn't enough to announce to the world but i realized as the was the way back to revolt neighborhood it was different because if i cannot be intellectual around my friends they don't get that. sova there were willing to understand and except that side but it was a realization well after even into early 20s to figure out not only did they have tremendous respect for that but in their own way they tried to convey to me what i was doing was cool to them even though they would tease me at the time and it was back-and-forth to figure out these people would say you wouldn't brag about that but we were all operating under the assumption but going back to my neighborhood did i could not talk about it period everybody knew i was going to a fancy school. agent in their own way wanted to talk about it with me but i also was looking for that vocabulary. >> host: i love how you bring up that word. vocabulary. your memoir has a and interesting juxtaposition never said thought it was jarring but now i am understand. you got from the hood and high academic prose and you blend that is a you have curse words and secessions and isocrates'. is a fascinating juxtaposition so why did you decide to write to freightways -- two white -- to write the of their ways? in a field where i could capture maya world and i became worried if i would put the of structure in one tone i would be doing my friends a disservice so much of the experience of my childhood is questions of learning the language. so it is what i wrestled with so when the u-turn from one system to another? when d shift and why? >> host: you have to think about this? >> guest: i thought that i had to but it was almost unconscious over time but there was no point to be that far away from my mind always think about it but i became accustomed very easily touse which so it gave me is a sense of empowerment and pride on one hand they would say it is neat that you can't do this and play the game. i had college friends who were very fascinated but then i feel there is another dimension to this that i talk about a friend that i dated very briefly there was that aspect that plays its blood dash up plays challenges up my navigation of identity. so what would it mean if somebody began to look at my speech pattern? did i feel so singular and distinctive i am sensitive that if anybody else would do that? karzai had to make my peace with this to be at the level with the sensibilities i was approaching that i was thinking and in -- to be empowered but other people had different reasons. >> host: when you went to oxford did you convert your british friends who were calling people followers? >> some of by christian friends were. but of the one hand i thought i was sharing something with them. to use these words for being a community so did i always feel comfortable? no. but then the question is how do i evaluate what a comfortable owe are acceptable use is and what doesn't? why should i be arbitrary? if they want to use these words certainly someone thought i would be too cavalier or too easy so they should be allowed to do this also i shared with them however they want. >> host: your worlds collided at one point in the book gives some of the set -- the suspense is up because you have written the book so we know how far you have, but there is a moment your status was in jeopardy because of a teenage prank to try to be cool and i am referring to the tower records incident and in your book you describe it as we will do this and you say it better than i would but what motivated you to shoplift then to realize this could happen in the one incident the ruined all of my dreams? >> i spend a lot of time on the weekends with my neighborhood friends whose throughout most of high-school we began to scale up and initially the pranks were on the order like getting us seats on the trade with moisturizer or the ocean but then we could entertain crazier ideas and tell one of the said just take all the stuff from tower records just to see them and sell some of it. and so i did and one of the aspects is that part of my decision to be the mastermind revolves around my friend validation of me as a genius to realize they thought i was smarter there were giving me credit to be smarter. so that was very flattering but it lured me to think i am smart enough to pull this off. it is the big corporation what is really wrong? but we each had our own rationalization but when we were together you have to play it cool are you going to do this or not? are you going to be a public and back out? we did it but then we were caught. only in being apprehended that the magnitude that colossal mistake and the stakes became so crystal clear and transparent because had the police been called it would be a whole world of trouble and every single privilege i was introduced to and allow to experience from the nature of my schooling to down the road possibilities to the idea the school dream this all could and did it also could have been deported. so it was in that moment that they began to snap into focus their brothers after that but the realization they had done something wrong and had serious implications that the nature of this system became clear to me. now there is another dimension that you touched on that the realization the outcomes of these types of pranks were asymmetric. no i -- so for some of my friend the outcomes would have been different for my collegiate friends it would be slightly different reasons they were in well-positioned to make a problem like this go away. so it kept me thinking about the incident for many, many years afterwards. >> host: you were let off with justifying and you do not tell your mom immediately and you had your parents help you out with the $400 and to this day i am sure you are lucky and feel happy but by the way to our records does not exist anymore. [laughter] talk about what happened when you get to princeton to start realizing having to pay for scholarships or not paying those but you were steady -- work steady to your senior year now what? to get a scholarship to oxford how did you realize by the end of your senior year that this is a problem and i need to get an immigration lawyer on board and start changing my status >> guest: that determination evolves solana was admitted to princeton initially everything was great with my financial aid package but even that wasn't the most straightforward of issues because i was encouraged to explain to the admissions officer what my status was a basket that would be factored into the acceptance of my application. but then i realized things would not be fighting that it had a work study component and i couldn't work so when i would explain this the answer was try to fix your status i sought out legal advice the answer i received it would be really risky and the likelihood was high but i would not get the visa and i said i don't know what other avenues and would have an id that i could consider marriage to a u.s. citizen i will not pursue this i want to do this the right way anti-soviet to normalize my status by the application but then there was no application. so in the intervening period i was thinking about my status and was falling legislative developments very carefully was called the every mac introduced 2001 despite bipartisan support had gone nowhere. when i was transitioning from ray, jr. thursday near year of college, a junior i tried to get the ball rolling everybody came up with the same answer there is nothing that can be done. of laws do not allow you to normalize your status you just have to wait so i had the fortune to reconnect with the lawyer who was put in touch he held me put together an application of a retroactive status we argue is circumstances of my childhood and the nature had prevented by family from legalizing. so we ask for retroactive student visa not permanent residency or citizenship but just so i could finish my time and from there the process of transitioning but they declined to rule. >> host: the new star in listing high-powered senators including senator clinton at that point to writing letters on your behalf and initially you can talk about how this was for the oxford scholarship? when they started to get on board to write about how extraordinary were? >> there were right-wing lawyers -- letters once we got to combine that application to go high-profile political support in conjunction with my a application now was very fortunate by air from prop and i attended the program they all came together how i could obtain the of letters of support but then another issue intersected no one in the that i need the of fellowship from the two years at oxford. that made them legalizing my status even more urgent because were i to exit the data states without legalizing my a status first i would be barred from re-entering tenures because of the tavis their undocumented. this led to less to ratchet it up to get as much support as we could to get this application approved but it it was not despite the letters so why a decided after commencement to go to the u.k. without having my status adjusted to face the likelihood of a 10 your day and -- and that is when i started at oxford. >> host: in you did not know of you would be able to come back. >> guest: in those days were emotionally difficult because of the uncertainty in to be in a new country with different rhythms and not to set wasn't having a great deal of fun and i was enjoying the opportunity in a most peculiar institution because at the graduate level oxford operated to though laissez-faire principal. we were left up to our own devices. not even like most the really we were allowed to follow whatever path you wanted it was both good and bad. so relieves the of more undisciplined among us to cobble together. >> kerry is saying you were undisciplined? [laughter] >> was trying to learn new things. but it also left students with the idea of how to be professional so i met with another supervisor -- said encouraged a great deal of slacking off but whether i could turn to them united states so the intellectual and emotional investment even after i was unfortunately dash fortunate enough. >> garett you we're doing research back to princeton. >> i was hired out of princeton and when i was hired an application was filed for me to obtain the work visa that went to the u.s. embassy in london then we finally got word was approved. >> host: there is a point when you are at oxford slacking off that you had ideas of other careers to kill little insight into your personality. you thought about working for major league baseball. you love that which by the way is a very academic pursuit. so what was it that fascinated you add why did you decide that was not the career for me? >> working with a baseball publication i thought it was undergoing the extraordinary transformation. my dad and i watched a lot of baseball i was an avid yankees and -- fame and and one of the of questions was how to think of baseball and quantitative terms. it was agonizingly difficult that i was drawn to the idea of the analytics which has many moving parts with contributions nonetheless. how do you analyze or evaluate? how you build a successful baseball team? in the form of the lagging keys that compete successfully assembled but then what goes into that? how do you have a team like the oakland a's? so thinking about all these questions that i realized or to write for a baseball publication so i really decided liked the ancient world too much. but a baseball. >> host: but there was many sports so you still continue that. what i love about the idea is the fact that you love the year ickes' it all comes full circle because you are awaiting your green card interview because he recently got married and your first date was set up that the yankees' game so it all comes full circle. you did did your wife six years so it isn't though let me get married to do the u.s. citizen it was a friendship that evolved from baseball and intellectual pursuit now you go from undocumented child to becoming a permanent resident. kid you see how your path has taken you? have urged you discuss that with ms. c? >> when we began dating she did not know these are the baseball games were dates we have to together. one was a group excursion through one of the mutual friends that have gone to high school with her back college with me. i thought she was cool. we were friends on facebook but then i fell out of touch because i was consumed with adjusting my immigration status that fall that i was starting a ph.d. program but i needed to transitioned out of my work visa status that consumed all of my attention in the fall and though winter but spring 2009 came around and one day her mutual friend reached out to say she has a spare ticket with the two franchises i was watching for a long time. ice said of course, . we had such a great time i said was a delight to go next week? they were not even in town. [laughter] but even so we had such a great time after that we agreed it would be wonderful to go to more games. then we started dating than my first year in california i persuaded her to move out which was a marvelous development. but now to see the complexities with the immigration trying to do change or just and we recently filed the concurrence filing she got to see all the paperwork that we both have to fill out and she said oh my pitches this has been your life. said to not having any clear idea when you get an answer back in now and the stand this about you. it is a mutual understanding with this experience with the immigration system. >> host: that is beautiful because you are still waiting for immigration and your interview. . . we are in the ascendance. america is ours and we must not concede otherwise. that almost sounded like it was from the inch at world. this is your message. what do you want to leave readers and viewers of this program today, with this optimism. despite everything you have been through from a homeless shelter, from poverty to elite privilege and still figuring out your immigration status, what do you want to leave people with, a lesson about perseverance? >> guest: there are two lessons that i hope the book in our interview today conveys. the book has to do with immigrant specifically understanding what our roles in this great society, the narrative society are and what those roles entail and why the arguments that i have made since the publication of the book but one that is woven into the fabric of the book is america cannot be this twisted concepts. they cannot be viewed as the exclusive prerogative. america's power projects all over the world and many people have become americanized without knowing it. they are many people felt america's power before coming here and you have decided to come here. so what i think about the immigrant experience, but one thing i want to communicate to people is how in the way we have all been emigrated whether we have parents or grandparents, we have all been engaged in the cultural conversation that ranges far beyond the civil question of whether one was born in america for one was not. we have this process of building these communities together that are hybrid and lots more cultural and that's the lesson i want to impart on the reader. >> host: you also say i hate and i love america. why? >> guest: i have ambivalence towards america, america the idea and america the political. i love the community of america. these are communities that give them life. >> host: which communities? >> guest: the communities of new york city and the educational institutions i've been a part of a but more broadly the intellectual and social communities, all these different cities that i have been through and traveled through and all the people i've met throughout the u.s.. these are all aspects of my formation of my growth into adult identity. at the same time i hate some of the discourse that forms in the american ideal. this triumphalism and this idea that impact america can do no wrong because by virtue of all the great things that it's done it is not to be challenged, not to be interrogated. it's accomplishments should be listed as accomplishments not in need of any pushing back and not in need of any critique. i believe in the importance of critique in america. i don't believe that we should recompense with what we think america is or what's we think america has been. i think we should all commit ourselves to a critique of what are the aspects of american society. the discrimination between black and brown bodies. that critique is what willamette enable america to become a better place for all of those who reside in it and crucially for those who will come to it. >> host: the future of immigration reform and the dialogue about illegal immigrants taking this job, here you are, you have papers that you were not yet a citizen. you are teaching formerly incarcerated students at columbia as part of your fellowship. you're going to be a professor at princeton in 2016. you are teaching young hungry minds about the ancient world and its relevance today and yet in many peoples minds you are taking the job of citizens of this country. does that bother you? >> guest: it used to bother me a great deal. when i was a senior at princeton i was being interviewed not long after the profile of my life and i was asked specifically how do you feel about your being at henson being at perfectly a deserving american citizen did not get a chance to my answer was, because princeton is an institution that draws international is perfectly conceivable taste of some of the applications people submit fairly comprehensible that i was an international student as much as i was an american student. but the argument at the level of my replacement of a american citizen falls flat on its face but there's a broader argument to be made and this is the one that there are more general questions of how we understand this job situation. and how we understand what it means for immigrants to pick up an opportunity and what it means for people living here in terms of the opportunities that they are provisioned with and again i would say this is not a question of zero-sum dynamics because as we know from all of van neck and and -- economic literature that has come out to does not only can she began a four-month social security and welfare safety nets but they also by virtue of the fact that you consume goods drives the american economy to produce so this opens up job possibilities for america. somehow because an immigrant has arrived -- arrived in this country and taken a job from a well deserving american is simplistic and one dimensional argument as can be made so one of the things that's incumbent upon everyone who has participated is to develop and apply more sophisticated economic arguments. i have not even made any of the ethical arguments and there are plenty of arguments we went not to bring to bear on this but the economics are very complicated and in the longer term we support claims not only allowing current undocumented immigrants but the economic arguments to reevaluate the nature of border control and point in the direction of opening the borders not closing them are restricting the more pleasing them in the way that we have been. >> host: will the d.r.e.a.m. act ever come to bear? we have talked to and it's in its third year right now. what do you see if the nation will go through a transition with a new president and what do you see as the future for immigration reform? >> guest: a lot will hinge on who the president is an the house in the senate but with that in mind there are few medium-term developments worth keeping an eye on. one is the status of the class of reforms ushered in the executive order. since these are being held in the court and it's unclear when exactly this will be resolved if at all it is quite likely they will not be resolved that daca problem will not be resolved. so daca is a bundle of reform for the parents of undocumented immigrants in what would help expand the protection to a larger number of undocumented immigrants, everyone should the the -- attendance to the dynamics of this. this didn't come as terribly shocking news from the mouth of senator mitch mcconnell that there is no intention of eating immigration reform. bill in an act by the next presidential election and this is serious for those of us who are committed to immigration activism and to care deeply that reform passes as quickly as possible but this announcement should position us to look backwards and forward. to position us backwards in that we should be thinking about what the white house is doing over the past few years. doctors in the good in the view of those that believe in protection of undocumented immigrants. they also point to an issue that will have to be resolved as we approach the next election that holds the belief in some form of expanded immigration protection for undocumented holding their feet to the fire. we have to as activists interrogate democratic politicians who say there will reform and say well but we are going to allow to deport some and keep others here. what are the standards for deportation and how are those informed? i think activists have to commit to pushing back as much as possible. >> host: i think we should and with the path because that is what is informed your presence and your future and i know that ui one point -- and that might have had a little bit of aid in the form of libation so we are not going to do that here today but i would love for you to share with some of our viewers that quote that you keep very dear to your heart in latin ending greek, the saying that is part of you. maybe just leave us all with a couple of those and why they inform your life. >> guest: there are all these that flow in and out of my life but i will choose just a few. one of the poems that i first learned when arriving, when learning ancient greek that begins -- and it's a marvelous poem about a person you imagine is a poet setting down his shield and running away. there many different things that can be learned from this palm and one of the lessons is when to cut your losses or what does it mean to posture as cowardly even though you were doing so very outwardly and communicating that you have done something that according to their code -- so how can you nonetheless maneuver around and help refine and shape of their profession's? the latin text that i think about is one that you alluded to , a marvelous quote. i hate and i'd love and perhaps ask why i'm doing this. i don't know. i am tortured and at this point there's a remarkable ambivalence with a romantic attachment this maneuver back and forth between intense love and exploratory hate which my wife tells me jokingly when i decide to do things like not clean the apartment but it also speaks to how the greeks and romans developed this incredibly complicated mythology of the motion and it's something we should all be complacent and not only valorous and appreciate that reflect upon. to have these palms lingering in one's mind is a sign of how enriching education can be so this is the reason i try to keep these themes of latin and greek greek -- greek in my head. i. >> host: you are so many things that you she read in this book and yet you don't want to be labeled as one even though undocumented is the one that you bring out. but i think what readers of your book and viewers can take away is the humanistic education is relevant for all of us in everything we do and i thank you for sharing all of your views and your experiences with us today. >> guest: thank you so much. this was delightful. >> host: thanks a lot. >> guest: thank you. >> that was "after words" booktv's signature program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists public policymakers and others familiar with their material. "after words" airs every weekend on booktv at 10:00 p.m. on saturday, 12 and 9:00 p.m. on

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