Citizen Illegal

As a first-generation Mexican American, Olivarez begins to awaken to a sense of his Mexican cultural identity in these poems, and his need to honor that side of himself, which will enable him to live a more authentic life. Throughout this section, he once again addresses The Complexities of Assimilation and Cultural Identity. 

The two “Mexican Heaven” poems in this section (14, 22) comment humorously on Mexican life, poking fun at stereotypes of Mexicans and imagining a heaven very different from the traditional one. Nothing demonstrates this more than calling St. Peter by his Spanish name, Pedro, who offers all the Mexicans a shot of tequila as they enter heaven and even gets drunk himself. Tequila has a long-established place in Mexican culture and sometimes is even considered a symbol of national identity. Its occurrence in this poem stamps heaven as a very Mexican place. 

The second “Mexican Heaven” poem pokes fun at a stereotype of Mexican women as lazy by pretending that the stereotype is actually true. Not only that, it is also true in heaven, which makes heaven “gross,” a place where “the rats / are fat as roosters & the men die of starvation” (22). The humor has the effect of undermining the stereotype by exaggerating it. The “Mexican Heaven” poems work best when they are read aloud, as Olivarez has said that all his poems were written to be read aloud.

“Ode to Cheese Fries” (15-16) is the first of three odes in this section. An ode is a lyric poem addressed to a person or a particular subject. Traditionally, the ode is on a serious subject and is written in an elevated style or tone. The joke here is that Olivarez is invoking a traditional form for a poem about something as trivial, mundane, and apparently uninspiring as cheese fries. Moreover, the style is conversational rather than elevated. In terms of subject matter, the poem reveals the poet’s early assimilation to American culture, which includes the consumption of so-called junk food that contains few if any natural ingredients. When he states toward the end, “give me everything artificial” (22), the mature poet is looking back satirically at his youthful enthusiasms and suggesting that what is “artificial” can sometimes be more comforting or desirable than what is real. In the final lines he takes this to its logical conclusion by hyperbole: “I want a joy so fake it stains my insides & / never fades away” (22). 

In “I Wake in a Field of Wolves with the Moon” (17), the “i” of the poem examines Adolescent Struggles and Coming of Age, this time looking at what he learned about life and love. It is a confident, affirmative poem in which he makes it clear that love is not a sentimental thing. It can be tough and brutal, and pain is inevitable, but he relishes it nonetheless. He is a ready combatant and can keep company with wolves; he too has teeth, and he will not be pushed around. He has learned the need for self-assertion, and he wants something real, not the sort of love found in silly stories about princesses.

This poem leads into “Note: Rose That Grows from Concrete” (17), which also reflects upon the idea of toughness and resilience. In the first line, the speaker refers to the title as “the inspirational slogan” (17); it is in fact an allusion to a poem by famed rapper Tupac Shakur titled “The Rose That Grew from Concrete,” which appeared as the title poem in the posthumous volume of Shakur’s poetry published in 1999 and in the album of the same name. The poem lauds toughness and the ability to fight back over beauty and vulnerability. 

“Ode to Cal City Basement Parties” (19) is a straightforward, untroubled poem about a group of teens enjoying a party at someone’s home one evening when the parents are out. They are free to have fun and be themselves. The lights are off and there may be some alcohol circulating (“under the influence”), although that could simply refer to the heady atmosphere in the dark of the basement as the music plays and everyone is dancing. 

The teenagers take joy in reinventing themselves as they want themselves to be and doing it without the self-consciousness. They are born anew in every exhilarating moment:

no one watches while you

take the light glittering 

off the disco ball

& paint yourselves

brand new & shining.

The idea of being able to “paint yoursel[f] / brand new & shining” contrasts with the insecurity and conflicted identity discussed in the other poems, which suggests that the poem’s narrator is discovering a sense of agency. The poem thus suggests that people can “paint” themselves and their identities in new ways, ways that make them feel “shining” with confidence.

“Not-Love Is a Season” (20-22) provides another perspective on teenage life—the ups and downs of romantic love. In this case, the young speaker experiences loneliness and distress following the breakup of his relationship. Encouraged by his friends, he develops the understanding that “not-love” and love have their own seasons, like winter and summer, respectively. This is illustrated by some conventional imagery of winter as the “not-love” season: “[T]he freeze of loneliness. the dead / branches abandoned.” He also knows that love will return for its own season, and the poem concludes with a reassuring personified image of the natural life cycle of a tree. The coming season of love can be found even in winter. It “begins like a leaf. / when in the dead winter a tree dreams / of a crown it will one day wear” (22), suggesting renewal and a fresh, future experience of love. 

The poet then turns from his experiences of youthful love to his own family, specifically his mother. In “On My Mom’s 50th Birthday” (23), he tries to imagine his mother’s life before he was born, and what she might have been like when she was young. The result is a tender poem in which Olivarez imagines his mother as a single young woman in Guadalajara, dancing in a club with her sisters, attracting the interest of men. He wants to have a larger sense of the nature of their family and the connection that binds them as one, as conveyed by the image, “i am unbraiding our DNA, unknotting our lives” (23). The complexity of DNA is thus likened to a person’s braided hair, perhaps putting in mind the braided hair of his mother. 

“Hecky Naw” (24-25) reveals the process by which Olivarez awakened to the importance of proudly embracing his Mexican heritage. This marks a contrast to earlier poems such as “River Oaks Mall” and “Ode to Cheese Fries,” in which, as the child of immigrants, he felt the pull of assimilation into American life. The title means something like “heck no” or “hell, no”; the phrase is used by Kanye West (one of Olivarez’s favorite artists): “Aw hecky naw that boy is raw” (Kanye West. “School Spirit.” The College Dropout, Roc-A-Fella Records, 10 Feb. 2004). 

Olivarez uses the phrase as a kind of verbal clue as to his ethnic origins. He explains in the poem that when he went to Harvard, he covered up his ethnicity because he was ashamed of it. He assumed that he would just fit in there, with an Armani suit and the prospect of a prestigious job that would make his parents proud of him. He would have been assimilated into the American mainstream. That expectation proved both undesirable and impossible: “[T]he hood isn’t a garment you can shrug off” (24). Both his classmates and his professors treated him as someone who was different: “[I] never / could scrape myself white” (25). In other words, he could never authentically identify as white; to do so would involve removing part of his essential identity—a kind of self-erasure or even self-mutilation. 

Another ode, “Ode to Scottie Pippen” (26) follows, and this time, unlike “Ode to Cheese Fries,” there is no ironic or playful intent in the title. Scottie Pippen played in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the Chicago Bulls from 1987 to 1998, winning six NBA championships. He was one of Olivarez’s boyhood sports’ heroes; the poet’s tribute to him is simple and heartfelt: “i loved you best of all the Bulls.” He envied Pippen’s athletic ability that enabled him to leap so effortlessly, while he himself was built very differently, as conveyed by the simile, “i was short & chubby & jumped / like i carried baby elephants / in the pockets of my shorts.” Charles Smith, referenced in the poem, was another basketball star who played for one of the Bulls’ biggest rivals, the New York Knicks.