The Late Show writer Felipe Torres Medina has a new book available for pre-order now, America, Let Me In: A Choose Your Immigration Story. Set for release in March 2025, the project—inspired by the classic “Choose Your Own Adventure” series—puts readers in the position of immigrants trying to move to the United States.
The Colombian-born Medina wrote about the upcoming release in a post on his Substack Wednesday. After touching on the unfortunate relevance of his book as Donald Trump plans to begin mass deportations when he returns to the White House, Medina takes a darkly comic turn, writing that at least there’s “good news about one immigrant: me!” Medina describes his project as “a funny book about what people think is a deeply unfunny subject: immigration.”
“If you’re an immigrant, you know that immigration is deeply, deeply stressful, but also, sometimes really stupid and unintentionally funny,” Medina, who moved to the U.S. at 21 years old, continues. “It’s an imperfect system that requires perfection from the people participating in it. As such, it’s full of contradictions and hypocrisies and so many f*cking forms.”
What makes it a Choose Your Immigration story is, as he writes, the system provides a wide variety of ways to move to the U.S. (for now, as Medina notes). There are so many, in fact, that they can’t be contained in a single book, which he quips could fuel a sequel.
Medina also makes clear that his book only deals with legal immigration, “because the ways in which people move and stay in the U.S. irregularly are very sad and should be treated with more respect than in a humor book.”
The book’s title draws from live shows that he developed and performed starting last year. Its official description explains that the author “spent over 10 years of his life both navigating the chaos and confusion of the immigration system and explaining that craziness to the clueless Americans around him.”
It also previews some of the experiences Medina faced, including “discovering in an immigration interview that he shares a name with several criminals.”
You may recognize Medina from The Late Show, where he’s made several appearances on-air with Stephen Colbert.
If you want to dive further into some of Medina’s comedy, we recommend the excellent faux late-night monologue he wrote with Lizzie Logan for a theoretical show the night of the Succession presidential election. He’s also written about his struggles with immigration before for McSweeney’s.
America, Let Me In by Felipe Torres Medina is scheduled for release by publisher Abrams on March 11, and you can pre-order the book now.
