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Citizen Illegal - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Citizen Illegal

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“Citizen Illegal is right on time, bringing both empathy and searing critique to the fore as a nation debates the very humanity of the people who built it.” —Eve Ewing, author of Electric Arches

In this stunning debut, poet José Olivarez explores the stories, contradictions, joys, and sorrows that embody life in the spaces between Mexico and America. He paints vivid portraits of good kids, bad kids, families clinging to hope, life after the steel mills, gentrifying barrios, and everything in between. Drawing on the rich traditions of Latinx and Chicago writers like Sandra Cisneros and Gwendolyn Brooks, Olivarez creates a home out of life in the in-between. Combining wry humor with potent emotional force, Olivarez takes on complex issues of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and immigration using an everyday language that invites the reader in. Olivarez has a unique voice that makes him a poet to watch.

José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants. He is a co-host of the podcast, The Poetry Gods. A winner of fellowships from Poets House, The Bronx Council On The Arts, The Poetry Foundation, and The Conversation Literary Festival, his work has been published in The BreakBeat Poets and elsewhere. He is the Marketing Manager at Young Chicago Authors.

ISBN-13: 9781608469543

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Haymarket Books

Publication Date: 09-04-2018

Pages: 80

Product Dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.60(d)

Series: Breakbeat Poets

José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants. He is a co-host of the podcast, The Poetry Gods. A winner of fellowships from Poets House, The Bronx Council On The Arts, The Poetry Foundation, and The Conversation Literary Festival, his work has been published in The BreakBeat Poets and elsewhere. He is the Marketing Manager at Young Chicago Authors.

Table of Contents

I 1

(Citizen) (Illegal) 3

My Parents Fold Like Luggage 4

Mexican Heaven 5

River Oaks Mall 6

My Therapist Says Make Friends with Your Monsters 7

Boy & The Belt 9

The Voice in My Head Speaks English Now 10

Rumors 11

II 13

Mexican Heaven 14

Ode to Cheese Fries 15

I Wake in a Field of Wolves with the Moon 17

Note: Rose that Grows from Concrete 18

Ode to Cal City Basement Parties 19

Not-Love is a Season 20

Mexican Heaven 22

On My Mom's 50th Birthday 23

Hecky Naw 24

Ode to Scottie Pippen 26

III 27

Mexican Heaven 28

The Day My Little Brother Gets Accepted into Grad School 29

I Tried to Be a Good Mexican Son 30

I Walk into Every Room & Yell Where the Mexicans At 31

Mexican American Obituary 32

White Folks Is Crazy 33

Mexican Heaven 35

I Ask Jesus How I Got So White 36

Poem in Which I Become Wolverine 37

When the Bill Collector Calls & I Do Not Have the Heart to Answer 39

Mexican American Disambiguation 41

IV 43

Mexican Heaven 44

You Get Fat When You're in Love 45

Interview 46

My Family Never Finished Migrating We Just Stopped 48

If Anything Is Missing, Then it's Nothing Big Enough to Remember 49

Sleep Apnea 50

Mexican Heaven 51

Note: Vaporub 52

Summer Love 53

V 55

Mexican Heaven 56

Poem to Take the Belt Out of My Dad's Hands 57

My Mom Texts Me for the Millionth Time 58

I Loved the World So I Married it 59

Love Poem Feat Kanye West 60

Getting Ready to Say I Love you to My Dad, it Rains 61

River Oaks Mall (Reprise) 63

Gentefication 64

Guapo 66

Acknowledgments 67