Susan Kuklin set out to give voice to the silent in We Are Here to Stay. Nine young adults registered in the United States' Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program narrate the book; the idea for the work was to have them come out of the immigration shadows as flesh-and-blood individuals, rather than statistics or ambiguous generalizations. However, the book's original planned publication date collided with the federal government's repeal of DACA, and its existence became a threat to the subjects' safety. Still, the young people wanted their stories told. Originally, the format included full-color portraits, but those pages now appear as blank frames with only initials representing the immigrants' names. The stories, however, remain unchanged.
Coming as mere children from Korea, Independent Samoa, Colombia, Ghana and Mexico, these brave young men and women share experiences of fleeing to escape violence and poverty, to pursue a chance at education and their dreams. Their struggles are heartbreaking, their fortitude extraordinary. Kuklin transcribes the stories as spoken by their owners, which serves to bolster their authenticity and the humanity. Their powerful narratives reinforce one immigrant's words: "Being undocumented doesn't define me. I don't want documents... to be my signifier. Ultimately, I'm just a person." And the missing images speak volumes about the way society views these youths. Chilling, inspiring and hopeful, We Are Here to Stay transcends politics and finds the common bonds of mankind. --Jen Forbus, freelancer