I Was a Citizen of the Philippines, Right?

"I didn't know that I had become undocumented after, you know, arriving on this tourist visa and I didn't find out until I was applying for financial aid," she says. "So when people talk about needing things like permission to work or go to school...you don't just need permission." She adds: "You can be a writer and do the thing that the US government couldn't tell me [to] ...and it's really what made my life possible".