Yosimar Reyes, a poet and artist, reflects on the guidance the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas has given him.
Well before Jose Antonio Vargas became a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and filmmaker, he was told he couldn’t get an internship at The Seattle Times because he was an undocumented immigrant. At the time he feared that his immigration status would threaten both his ability to build a career in journalism as well as his ability to stay in the United States. Today, with more experience and better perspective, he helps others navigate concerns like these.
One such mentee is Yosimar Reyes, an artist in residence at Define American, an organization Vargas founded that “uses the power of story to transcend politics and shift the conversation about immigrants.” The two met at a film festival several years ago, at a screening of one of Vargas’s documentaries. Since then, Vargas been a mentor to Reyes, helping him think through how he could attend college and offering him a job at Define American after graduation. The two are now developing, among other projects, a play that Yosimar wrote about growing up queer and undocumented.
For The Atlantic’s series on mentorship, “On the Shoulders of Giants,” I spoke with Reyes about how Vargas has influenced his ideas about citizenship, belonging, and forging a career as an undocumented immigrant—especially now that the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program is uncertain. The conversation that follows has been edited for length and clarity.
[For more on this story by B.R.J. O'Donnel, go to https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/09/mentorship-vargas-undocumented/540330/ ]
Photo: Jose Antonio Vargas and Yosimar Reyes speaking at an event
Jose Antonio Vargas, left, and his mentee Yosimar Reye
Comments (0)