Citizen Illegal

Part 1 focuses on the immigrant experience, both Olivarez’s own and those of others, introducing the theme of The Complexities of Assimilation and Cultural Identity. Most of the poems are told by a first-person speaker/narrator and are based on Olivarez’s life, as filtered through his mature understanding and allowing for some poetic license. As he says in an interview, he “wrote the book in part […] to a younger version of myself that I’m imagining” (Tahat, Dujie. “Conversations with Contributors: José Olivarez.” The Adroit Journal, 19 Sept. 2018). 

The first poem, “(Citizen) (Illegal)” (3), begins by describing Olivarez’s own situation, born in the US to Mexican parents who were in the country illegally. He was therefore a US citizen by birth. The poem then develops the theme of belonging and not-belonging, which leads to confusion and division. The repeated parenthetical adjectives (citizen) and (illegal) capture this dichotomy in the immigrant experience. The Mexican immigrant may be accepted (citizen) if he does the things that a citizen does, like go to school, have American classmates, speak English, or go to college. 

However, there are far more (illegal) parentheses (28 in total) than (citizen) parentheses (15 in total), which shows how formidable the obstacles the immigrant faces are if he does anything that reveals his Mexican origins and culture, like speaking Spanish or singing Mexican songs. In doing so, he becomes like an “outcast,” regarded with suspicion by “citizens”; he is perceived as an illegitimate presence in the country, regardless of his actual legal status. The poem ends with the same question with which it began, with Olivarez wondering if he, the boy born in the US to undocumented immigrants, is more American than Mexican. It is a question that Olivarez will continue to explore in other poems. 

Olivarez examines his origins in a different way in “My Parents Fold Like Luggage” (4). The title emphasizes the lack of dignity involved as husband and wife try to fulfill their dream of immigrating to the United States. The phrase also describes the truth of what occurred—they concealed themselves in the trunk of a car, with the as-yet-unborn Olivarez safe in his mother’s womb. (The “six” mentioned in the fourth stanza includes the three brothers who will be born later.) The imagery presents the Toyota Tercel metaphorically as “a small lady bug” (4), while also referring to the starry night sky. The sky with its stars suggests expansiveness and hope, like making a wish upon a star. His parents, in trying to cross the border, are hoping for a better life. 

This imagery becomes ominous when the car is stopped at the border: “[S]tars glitter / like broken glass. the night so heavy / it chokes” (4). The idea of the stars now “glitter[ing] / like broken glass” suggests that his parents’ hopes may soon be dashed if the border guard discovers them (4). When the border guard fails to open the trunk and waves them on, their car “steals north” (4), as if there is something furtive about it—indeed, they have managed to elude detection and enter the country illegally. Olivarez’s parents attribute their success to the blessings of God, although Olivarez is not so sure—he does not share his parents’ religious beliefs. 

“Mexican Heaven” (5) is the first of eight poems with that title, distributed throughout the book, that humorously imagine how Mexicans might experience heaven entirely differently from the way white people do. In this first poem, even though St. Peter has Mexicans on the list for entry into heaven, they decide to sneak in because they have not trusted lists “since Ronald Reagan was president” (5). Reagan was US president from 1981 to 1989. While he passed The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 to address paths to immigration and legalization, the Act also enforced border security and imposed sanctions on employers who knowingly employed illegal immigrants. There were also notable problems during his administration with denying asylum to Latin American citizens who were fleeing dictatorships the US supported, with many of these refugees getting arrested at the US-Mexico border (Gzesh, Susan. “Central Americans and Asylum Policy in the Reagan Era.” Migration Policy Institute, 1 Apr. 2006). The poem may thus refer to how Mexicans became aware of the danger of “lists” and exclusions during this time period.

Olivarez addresses the issue of assimilation in the next poem, “River Oaks Mall” (6). The poem suggests he and his family were at first eager to embrace an American rather than Mexican identity. In the first three stanzas, Olivarez draws on memories of incidents in grade school. First, he denies having a crush on a certain girl, even though he keeps looking at her. The message is that a vehement denial can sometimes suggest a concealment of the truth, as is also the case when he denies that he was the one who brought beans for lunch. This suggests the shame he felt as a boy about being Mexican: He tries to deny his heritage and cover it up, which only makes it more obvious. 

This is also what happened in River Oaks Mall, located in Calamut City, a Chicago suburb, where the family lived when they first came to America. The whole family puts on their Sunday best for a Saturday stroll in the mall, but succeed only in looking completely out of place. They are “trying so hard to be American” (6), to blend in, but they hit the wrong note entirely, revealing what they are not rather than what they are. Olivarez’s perspective on assimilation will later change dramatically in terms of how he identifies himself. 

“My Therapist Says Make Friends with Your Monsters” (7-8) shows Olivarez trying to come to terms with childhood and adolescent trauma. In consultation with his therapist, he realizes that he created his “monsters” himself. A monster grew whenever he tried to evade a part of himself. The one monster he identifies is the fact that he was overweight; the more he tried to push this out of his awareness, the more it tormented him, badly affecting his self-esteem. His habit was to repress this aspect of reality rather than deal with it. The therapist guides him toward self-acceptance: He must accept who he is in all its aspects; he must invite the monsters in rather than push them away—only then can they be transformed. This foreshadows how Olivarez will gradually learn to become more confident in his person and identity later in the collection.

A boy’s relationship with his father is the topic of “Boy & The Belt” (9), reflecting The Nature of Family Relationships. Unlike the other poems in this section, it is told in the third-person point of view rather than first-person, “he” rather than “I,” which may suggest that the memories felt too raw and painful to be told in first person. Using a third-person narrator is a way of distancing the experience, of removing its sting. The “boy” fears the corporal punishment that his father administers with his belt. His father says he has no choice. He believes the beating is an “act of love”—presumably because it is intended to correct the boy’s behavior, which will eventually benefit him. The boy seems to believe him. Later, in “Poem to Take the Belt Out of My Dad’s Hands” in Part 5 (57), Olivarez will create a new, more comforting story around these incidents of corporal punishment. 

The title of “The Voice in My Head Speaks English Now” (10) stands alone and is not referenced directly in the poem, although it tells a similar story of loss and the ways different generations of the same family can experience immigration. In early childhood Olivarez was taught only Spanish; he learned English only when he went to school, and the title suggests that he has reached the point where the new language is more familiar to him than the old. This is a clue to how his assimilation to Anglo or white society has progressed, yet something inside him reacts against it, which is symbolized by the fact that he does not feel at home in the coldness of a Chicago winter. He tells himself he really comes from a sunnier, warmer realm but is not quite convinced. With his mother, though, it is different, as she is still undeniably from that warm land: “[I]f you catch my mom / in good light, it’s impossible to tell where the sun ends” (10), the speaker remarks, which is a subtle, symbolic way of suggesting that his mother, who speaks only Spanish, remains closer to her country of origin than her American-born son. 

“Rumors” (11), like “River Oaks Mall,” goes back to grade school memories, of how children pass on rumors about their schoolmates that either wildly exaggerate the truth or pass off a lie as a truth. It is better, the poem states, not to believe anything. However, a lie can easily become a truth: “[W]hat’s the difference between a lie / & a truth. a lie hasn’t happened yet” (11). The second part of the poem offers a contrast between the love songs that the kids soak up from popular culture and the reality of their lives. Olivarez mentions “Back that Ass Up,” a 1998 song by rapper DJ Jubilee, which is an example of his immersion in American popular music as a boy and teenager. The irony is that most of the children had never seen love modeled in their own families, which were all broken or dysfunctional. This had a negative effect on their self-esteem. They would practice saying “i love you to the mirror. that was a lie we wanted to believe” (11). The last line returns to the theme of truth and lies, but with a twist: Sometimes a lie can appear to be preferable to the truth.