Citizen Illegal

Part 3 deals more directly with social commentary, touching on The Impacts of Racism and Violence and how they influence Olivarez’s daily experience. The section begins with another “Mexican Heaven” (28), in which St. Peter only lets Mexicans into heaven to work in the kitchen. While humorous in tone, it also takes satirical aim at racial discrimination in the real world, as a result of which Mexicans are often assigned to menial jobs. The same point will be made in “I Walk into Every Room & Yell Where the Mexicans At.” The idea of heaven turning out to be a place of disappointed hopes and discrimination also subtly reflects the immigrant experience of the American Dream, with America often portrayed as a place where dreams come true, only for many immigrants to discover that is not always the case. 

This is followed by another family poem, “The Day My Little Brother Gets Accepted into Grad School” (29), which highlights economic hardship, although it does not explicitly include any racial element as a cause. In spite of his academic success, for which his mother and father praise him, Olivarez’s brother is unemployed and has no money: “[H]e can’t afford a happy meal” (29). This prompts Olivarez to recall the economic distress the family endured when the steel mill where his father worked closed. He is likely referring to the closure of South Works, a US Steel mill in Calumet City, which closed in April 1992, when José was four years old. The family home was foreclosed upon, too. 

Nevertheless, the poem points out that his parents had the tenacity and strength to raise the children even in economically unstable times. The poem is thus a tribute to his parents as well as an expression of concern about his brother’s apparently uncertain future. Olivarez fears that academic success is only a prelude to another disappointment, “another promise, the familiar fluttering” that may lead to nothing (29).  

In “I Tried to Be a Good Mexican Son” (30), Olivarez addresses The Nature of Family Relationships. He sounds a self-critical and apologetic note as he describes what he believes were his failings as his mother’s son. He tried to be a good Mexican son, but he did not try hard enough, he says. He went to college, which was good, but he studied African American studies rather than law, medicine, or business, which was not so good. It meant that he has not landed a “million-dollar job” or married or given his mother grandchildren. He thinks he must have been a disappointment to her and says he is always messing up. The poem maintains a wry tone, with Olivarez claiming he doesn’t answer her texts quickly enough or share the Jesus memes she sends him on Facebook. He says, “if there is a hell / i’m going express,” but he immediately adds, “i hope they have wifi” (30). His mother, of course, loves him anyway, whatever his self-perceived failings, which reinforces the family as a source of strength and support for the speaker. 

“I Walk into Every Room & Yell Where the Mexicans At” (31) is one of Olivarez’s provocative or attention-getting titles. Moreover, it creates an expectation that is not delivered in the poem, since this is exactly what Olivarez does not do at this New York City party. In fact, he feels isolated, since the party is made up mainly of white people. He talks with a liberal white woman who says he is lucky, and he thinks she means that he is lucky to be in New York rather than Mexico. She says she does not see many Mexicans in this part of the city, but Olivarez knows that his people exist “because of what we make.” He is thinking of his father who works in a steel mill making auto components. 

Immediately after the woman makes that remark, he sees a brown-skinned waiter coming through the kitchen door and hears the music of Mexican idol Selena wafting out from the kitchen too. This conveys the fact that Mexicans are present, but they go unnoticed and unacknowledged by the white people. Ironically, Olivarez sees commercials for Taco Bell on television all the time, but in those ads he never sees a face resembling his own: “[A]ll my people fold into a $2 crunchwrap supreme” (31). The product is omnipresent, but the people are hidden. 

Several poems follow that explore Olivarez’s frustration and bewilderment about the violence of American society and the threat that it poses to nonwhite people. “Mexican American Obituary” (32) is about the threat posed by gun violence, especially the number of Black people who are killed by the police. Mexican Americans, collectively symbolized by the names Juan, Lupe, and Lorena, suffer a kind of death too, because they turn their backs on the violence and think it will not happen to them. However, it is not only Black people who are threatened: “Lorena died after loading the gun & handing it over / to the policeman who aimed it at her whole family.” They will all die again, symbolically speaking, the next day if all they can do is ask, “Black people to die more quietly / asking white people not to turn the gun on us” (32). 

“White Folks Is Crazy” (33-34) starts with an innocuous incident, in which Olivarez and his friend Emiliano are surprised at how white boys wear shorts in winter as if they don’t feel the cold. Emiliano’s comment that follows takes this observation to a different level altogether: “[W]hite folks on TV / kill people every day / & they don’t seem / to feel a thing” (34). In referencing how violence is often reduced to a form of entertainment on television or normalized through constant reporting on newscasts, Emiliano’s comment once more reflects the prevalence of violence in American culture. As in “Mexican American Obituary,” this violence is often disregarded or not taken as seriously as it should be, with the seeming lack of “feel[ing]” in response to killings and violence reflecting a wider societal apathy. 

Two humorous poems come next, but both have a serious message. In the fifth “Mexican Heaven” poem (35), the narrator states that white people in heaven practice gentrification, building condos there. They also practice a kind of subtle violence by asking Mexicans to speak English, implying that they want to maintain their cultural hegemony even in heaven. Then comes the line, “I’m just kidding,” before the narrator delivers a punch line: “[T]here are no white people in heaven” (35). Olivarez has spoken about how he managed to “get away with that line,” saying that white people have so much that there is a big “power difference” between them and Mexicans (Chicago Humanities. “José Olivarez: Citizen Illegal.” 00:18:47, YouTube, 2019). He implies that, in jokingly saying “there are no white people in heaven,” he is simply restoring a proper balance (35). 

The next poem, “I Ask Jesus How I Got So White” (36) also has a punch line: People sometimes take the light-skinned Olivarez for a white person and are doubtful when he explains that his mother told him he is Mexican. After all, “Mexican women can’t be trusted” (36). He uses the same technique as in the “Mexican Heaven” poems, appearing to adopt a stereotype but defusing it by making fun of the absurdity of it. Then, curious, he asks Jesus the question posed in the poem’s title. Jesus does not answer the question but instead applies it to himself: “[M]an / i’ve been trying to figure out the same damn thing myself.” He is alluding to the fact that Jesus is often represented in white culture as having been white, even though he was from the Middle East. White people have thus co-opted him as one of their own instead of more accurately representing his ethnicity. 

In “Poem in Which I Become Wolverine” (37-38) every morning, the “i” of the poem is alarmed by what he sees on the news about festering world problems. He then turns his indignant attention to “my people,” who are being harassed. They are being detained by ICE, and even 4th graders are put in handcuffs. He understands that some white people see Mexicans as violent, even the women, and he satirizes this belief by the use of hyperbole: “[I] know / when you look at our abuelitas [grandmothers] you see knives / in their braids, knives in their hips” (37). He has now become very assertive regarding upholding his Mexican culture and identity, citing one constant aggravation, “the daily calls to speak English properly” (37), which shows intolerance and makes people feel like they do not belong. 

In contrast to the earlier poems in the collection, the speaker is no longer interested in assimilation, for “what is assimilation but living death?” (37). In his new combativeness he becomes a “Wolverine,” ready to challenge such attitudes and injustice, even though he sees the danger to himself in doing so. Wolverine was a character in Marvel Comics who was equipped with three claws in each hand; he had great strength and a supernatural ability to regenerate after suffering injury. In casting himself as a superhero figure, the speaker thus fantasizes about giving himself strength and power in a situation where he feels deeply disempowered—he longs to be able to defend himself and others in the face of discrimination and violence.

“When the Bill Collector Calls & I Do Not Have the Heart to Answer” (39-40) is one of Olivarez’s most personal poems, in which his speaker faces what he regards as his own inadequacy—a lack of maturity—with brutal honesty. In the poem, he fails to rise to the demands of the occasion and reverts to his childhood self while the helpless adult looks on. The poem thus presents two apparently separate people, the boy and the adult, who share the same name but “are not the same person” (39). It is apparent that the adult speaker is out of work and has bad credit, and he is unable to deal with financial issues. Even though he promises the bill collector that he “will take responsibility” (40) he is entirely passive, staring at a blank television screen, apparently overwhelmed by the situation. The speaker’s financial hardships speak to the motif of poverty and economic struggles in the collection, mirroring his parents’ earlier struggles after his father lost his job and their house was foreclosed.  

“Mexican American Disambiguation” (41-42) returns to The Complexities of Assimilation and Identity in the United States and Mexico. Disambiguation means removing ambiguity, clarifying what is meant by a word or phrase or category. In this case, disambiguation describes the different ways Mexican Americans are referred to and how they are understood in terms of the wider society in the United States. 

Some of the terms, such as diverse and interracial, may have been conceived to bridge gaps in understanding racial and cultural identity in a neutral way, honoring difference but also trying to be inclusive. For example, his parents are Mexican, but Mexicans who live in Mexico call themselves “mexicanos.” In their turn, they would call Olivarez’s parents—his mother is white and his father is mestizo—“gringos,” which is what Olivarez’s family calls white people, whereas white people call his parents “interracial.” Olivarez also makes fun of the catch-all term “diverse”: “[E]verything in me / is diverse even when i eat American foods / like hamburgers, which, to clarify, are American / when a white person eats them & diverse / when my family eats them” (41). In these ways, the speaker suggests that identity can be complex and even fluid, and that whether one is an insider or outsider in any given context can depend on who is doing the categorizing.