Conditional Citizens

Even though I was born in the great state of Illinois to Venezuelan parents on a diplomatic mission, I spent the first 10 years of my life living abroad. When I came back, I was confronted with the fact that I wasn’t Venezuelan enough for my distant relatives that often called me “Gringa”, nor American enough to be afforded all the rights my citizenship should have afforded me without first proving my worthiness.

In 2001 we returned to the U.S., by then I spoke 3 languages, had traveled to almost every continent, read voraciously, was in gifted classes, and could hold conversations with foreign dignitaries; however, I experienced racism and was often asked to go back to where I came from. Given the fact that I was U.S. born, I had struggled to understand exactly where I was supposed to go back to if Illinois was not the answer. Until that point, I had spent most of my life living on/near American bases and attending American schools where my ethnicity had never been a problem and where my passport had served as enough proof of my citizenship. But at home, on American soil, surrounded by my fellow countrymen...I sometimes felt like an outsider. Therefor, I have often struggled to articulate how awful it feels to have to prove the worthiness of my citizenship but after reading this book I feel seen and understood.

In the book, Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America by Laila Lalami, she examines what it means to be a citizen in the United States and how this definition has changed throughout the years. In the book she explains how despite our founding fathers claiming that "All men are created equal" this has not always been the case with several groups being clearly excluded throughout the history of our nation. Additionally, the book covers the impacts that race, heritage, economic standards, and even gender have on citizenship. At times, she highlights the cognitive dissonance that many citizens face when they are asked to atone for the sins of their fellow community members and are held accountable as a unit, while others are treated as individuals and their actions are never said to represent their community as a whole. Conditional Citizens explores all of the ways in which minorities and marginalized communities are often asked to assimilate rather than integrate and how failure to do is seen as not being patriotic enough or deserving enough of one's own rights afforded to us by our citizenship. What Lalami brings to light is that no matter your birthplace or all of the immigration hoops you might jump through, no matter your contributions to this country, no matter your level of education, no matter the love that you have for the stripes and stars or the oath of allegiance that you swear, there will always be something that you aren't doing well enough that invalidates your claim to the rights your citizenship affords. Of course this is only true until you are no longer see as a threat to those in the power majority, but by then so many of us might have already sacrificed too much of our authentic selves and will be nothing but watered-down versions of the people we once were.

Lalami's collection of essays on the issue of citizenship are honest, raw, well-researched, and very timely given the conversations that are currently taking place in our country. While the author speaks from her experience as an Arab Muslim woman from Morocco, she does a phenomenal job of illuminating the struggles that other minorities and marginalized groups face in this country.

I highly recommend this novel to everyone regardless of country of origin.

................................................................................................................................................

What does it mean to be American? In this starkly illuminating and impassioned book, Pulitzer Prize­­–finalist Laila Lalami recounts her unlikely journey from Moroccan immigrant to U.S. citizen, using it as a starting point for her exploration of the rights, liberties, and protections that are traditionally associated with American citizenship. Tapping into history, politics, and literature, she elucidates how accidents of birth—such as national origin, race, and gender—that once determined the boundaries of Americanness still cast their shadows today.

Lalami poignantly illustrates how white supremacy survives through adaptation and legislation, with the result that a caste system is maintained that keeps the modern equivalent of white male landowners at the top of the social hierarchy. Conditional citizens, she argues, are all the people with whom America embraces with one arm and pushes away with the other.

Brilliantly argued and deeply personal, Conditional Citizens weaves together Lalami’s own experiences with explorations of the place of nonwhites in the broader American culture.