UNDOCUMENTED

A debut memoir detailing the remarkable life of a heart surgeon who came to the United States as an undocumented immigrant.

“I was living in the bubble of a dream that could explode at any minute,” writes Fernandez of his early years in the United States. Precarity, as it turns out, was a feature of his life long before he became a heart surgeon. In 1969, Fernandez’s father traveled from Colombia to New York City in search of employment, later followed by his wife. The author and his younger brother remained in Barrio Antioquia, a Medellín neighborhood marked by violence. After years of familial distance, the teenage Fernandez and his sibling risked a harrowing journey through the Bahamas, North Bimini, and the coast of Florida to Newark International Airport. The town of West New York, New Jersey, where their parents lived, provided the setting for Fernandez’s rags-to-riches experience in America. In succinct, efficient prose worthy of a pragmatic surgeon, the author details his search for cultural footing, his challenges with a new language, and his eventual commitment to achievement through education. At Memorial High School, he showed himself to be an excellent athlete, and he applied similarly rigorous discipline to his academic studies and pursuit of Eagle Scout recognition. In 1985, Fernandez entered Princeton University as a freshman, and he eloquently recounts in this book how he coped with impostor syndrome at an elite university. After graduation, he attended Harvard Medical School and undertook a grueling surgical internship at New York University Medical Center. The memoir’s only notable weakness—its excessive valorization of a Horatio Alger-like work ethic—is offset by its transparency and skillful moments of poignancy. Over the course of the book, Fernandez recalls the luxury of a fresh apple, his close calls with immigration police, the death of a young friend in an apartment fire, how he helped his own family in another blaze, young love, and the agony of being separated from family members. He provokes emotion not so much through lyricism but through a frank invitation to witness his life’s challenges.

A strikingly sincere rendering of one man’s pursuit of the American dream.