Felecia Russell’s groundbreaking book, Amplifying Black Undocumented Student Voices in Higher Education, powerfully centers the perspectives of self-identified Black undocumented students, a community whose experiences have largely been overlooked within mainstream and academic discourses on immigration. Of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States today, 12% are Black (xiv). This population is highly heterogeneous consisting of individuals from multiple parts of the globe and who arrived to the U.S. under a variety of contexts (Ibid). As Russell explains, “The ‘Black’ immigrant, in particular, refers to those who are descendants of the African diaspora. Black immigrants include Black African, Afro-Asian, Afro-European, Afro-Caribbean, and Afro-Latin American people” (xiii). Taking an intersectional approach bringing together lived experiences related to race and immigrant legal status, Russell draws upon her own story and in-depth interviews she conducted with 15 current and former students from across the country. Such an approach Russell argues, is crucial to addressing the disproportionate effects of deportation on members of the undocuBlack community, raising awareness about the lacunae of resources to support members of this population, and underscoring the urgency for educators and policy makers to proactively advocate on behalf of undocuBlack individuals in decision making processes (xxi-xxii). A well-researched, theoretically innovative, and accessibly written book, Amplifying Black Undocumented Student Voices in Higher Education makes a critical intervention in race, immigration, and higher education scholarship building on recent work in the field of undocumented immigrant youth studies that has increasingly drawn attention to intersectional identity formations including undocuAsian and undocuQueer immigrant experiences, among others (xx).
Russell’s book is divided into two parts. The first provides a chronological overview of the author’s experiences growing up in Jamaica, immigrating to the United States, and pursuing higher education. The second focuses on interviews that Russell conducted with 15 self-identified undocuBlack students covering themes including a sense of belonging, invisibility, and the amplification of undocuBlack voices in higher education. In describing how invisibility manifested itself in her own narrative, the author recounts an experience she had in high school in which a mentor extended an invitation to attend a meeting of the local DREAMers club. She shared, “[O]n my first day at the student group meeting, I instantly realized that I was the only Black person in the room. I simultaneously felt a lack of belonging and an urge to fit in. One student asked the counselor, ‘Why is she here?’ He replied, ‘She is undocumented too; she is from Jamaica.’ I pretended I did not hear the conversation because I was suddenly ashamed that my undocumented-ness did not match their picture of what I should look like. That student did not mean any harm when she asked the question; she had just never known that Black students could also be undocumented immigrants. I had never seen any images nor heard any stories about Black undocumented immigrants, so I could understand her perspective. I never went back to those meetings” (x). This situation—being the only undocuBlack person in a DREAMer organization—was one that repeated itself during the author’s time as an undergraduate student at California Lutheran University. By founding Embracing Undocumented in 2020, “an online platform that focuses on sharing the stories of undocuBlack people and connecting undocumented young people to mentors in their field,” Russell recognized the liberatory potential of sharing her story and supporting others in doing so as well (xxxi). Describing the moment she first shared her experience publicly, Russell explained, “I realized that I can’t hide and tell my story at the same time; I have to tell it bravely. Form that moment, I began to tell my story as Felecia S. Russell. I was no longer sharing it through pseudonyms. It freed me” (41). Though as other scholars have noted, practices of disclosing one’s immigrant legal status to a mentor or publicly are highly personal decisions and often context dependent, the author’s experience underscores the important role that telling one’s story and doing so on one’s own terms can serve in promoting visibility for and supporting broader community building efforts among undocuBlack individuals.
Moreover, the second part of the book contextualizes the author’s narrative within that of 15 other self-identified undocuBlack students. The students Russell interviewed “represented 11 different origin countries and 10 U.S. states. There were six self-identified males and nine self-identified females” (49). In addition to being comprised of current and former students, the author’s participants were completing higher education across all stages of the educational pipeline ranging from undergraduate to graduate degrees (masters, law, and doctorate). Regarding undocuBlack student navigation of and involvement in campus spaces, Russell found that students in her study exhibited a range of participation in DREAMer and related clubs including building connections with their Latinx peers as one of the few undocuBlack individuals in campus DREAMer clubs (69-71) and looking to Black Student Union and African and Caribbean student groups in which they advocated for greater discussion of immigrant issues such as support for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program (79). The author’s findings point to the need for higher education professionals to employ an intersectional approach in bolstering support for all undocumented students working in collaboration with staff members supporting cultural organization, queer student groups, and so on. Lastly, as a self-identified undocuBlack scholar Russell notably does not seek to speak on behalf of her participants but includes recommendations directly from interviewees as showcased in Chapter 8. With a dual academic and practitioner audience in mind, she ends each chapter with a helpful summary and set of preliminary recommendations to begin addressing the issues raised. For example, Russell recaps her discussion of undocuBlack student invisibility at the end of Chapter 7 and then draws the reader’s attention to the structural issues leading to such invisibility in the first place to point out ways that higher educator professionals might take those root causes into account when supporting members of this student population. She writes, “While it is important to acknowledge the invisibility that the undocuBlack students in this study experienced, it is also essential to comprehend the implications of invisibility. I assert that the implications of invisibility are larger than the lack of access to resources; invisibility also leads to overcriminalization and lack of advocacy for undocuBlack immigrants, which is detrimental to undocuBlack students’ successful persistence within higher education” (108). As the author explains, it is thus critical that administrators, staff, and faculty consider the ongoing effects of structural racism, anti-Blackness, and the hyper surveillance of Black communities when designing interventions to meet the needs of undocuBlack students.
For readers of Latinx Talk, Russell’s Amplifying Black Undocumented Student Voices in Higher Education is an invaluable resource. During the spring 2025 semester, the book provided me with a unique opportunity as a faculty member to partner with professional staff at Brown University’s Undocumented, First-Generation College, and Low-Income Student (UFLi) Center in developing an event linked to my course, “Immigrant Social Movements: Bridging Theory and Practice.” The course took a comparative approach to examining undocumented immigrant political activism across different racial/ethnic groups, namely Latinx, Black, and Asian, and was accompanied by a community engagement component in which students completed internships with local immigrant-serving organizations. Students in the class read selections from Russell’s book and were able to explore the theoretical frameworks (e.g. intersectionality, anti-Blackness and Black immigrant histories, and belonging and invisibility in higher education) and arguments put forth in it during an hour-long in-person discussion with the author. In fact, the book was many students’ favorite text from the course and was cited frequently in students’ final papers. Russell’s visit to class was followed by a well-attended, highly interactive public presentation that evening and a campus-wide faculty/staff training the next day. Bridging the often-separate spheres of academic instruction and student support, Amplifying Black Undocumented Student Voices in Higher Education gave us a one-of-a-kind template for working across these two spaces and assisting students in being able to bring their full selves into all aspects of university life.
As one of the first monographs on undocuBlack student experiences, Felecia S. Russell’s Amplifying Black Undocumented Student Voices in Higher Education is truly a distinctive and innovative book with multiple implications for scholarship and practice. At the same time, Russell urgently reminds readers that the narratives enclosed within it represent the lives of community members and to treat them as such: “UndocuBlack stories are special, as they are often untold. I hope you will handle these stories with care” (xxii). Recognizing the immense privilege it is to be able to have such a window into understanding the lives of undocuBlack students in the U.S. today, I too urge readers to take great care in their engagement with the book and to take the necessary time to sit with the extremely compelling testimonies enclosed within it. There is indeed much to be learned from Russell’s timely, original contribution to the literature on undocumented immigrant youth and as she frequently underscores in the text, this must be done in a manner that centers the perspectives of undocuBlack community members and uplifts their voices in the pursuit of a liberatory future for all.