Introduction

This chapter introduces the role of storytelling in the immigrant rights movement. It presents the questions that animate the remainder of the book: How and why are young undocumented activists in New York choosing to use their stories as activism? What are the prospects and limitations of storytelling for developing a public and political voice? How do immigrant-produced mediated narratives abate the effects of isolation for undocumented immigrants and facilitate communal coping? By what means do immigrant activists confront foundational notions that predispose many US citizens to believe that the United States is simultaneously a result of the labors and dreams of an ideal class of immigrants and the victim of a new class of unworthy and illegal job stealers who refuse to “get in line” for citizenship? The chapter offers an overview of Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm and explicates how this paradigm is applied to the context of undocumented storytelling. The chapter contains a literature review, a detailed description of the methods of oral history, critical-rhetorical ethnography, and narrative analysis, and concludes with a chapter outline.