Citizen Illegal
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
Named a Best Book of the Year by Newsweek and NPR.
In this “devastating debut” (Publishers Weekly), 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, with a unique voice that makes him a poet to watch.
“The son of Mexican immigrants, Olivarez celebrates his Mexican-American identity and examines how those two sides conflict in a striking collection of poems.” —USA Today
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José Olivarez. (2018). Citizen Illegal. Haymarket Books.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)José Olivarez. 2018. Citizen Illegal. Haymarket Books.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)José Olivarez, Citizen Illegal. Haymarket Books, 2018.
MLA Citation (style guide)José Olivarez. Citizen Illegal. Haymarket Books, 2018.
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- bioText: 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.
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- “Olivarez steps into the ‘inbetween’ standing between Mexico and America in these compelling, emotional poems. Written with humor and sincerity” (Newsweek).
Named a Best Book of the Year by Newsweek and NPR.
In this “devastating debut” (Publishers Weekly), 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... - isOwnedByCollections
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- “Olivarez steps into the ‘inbetween’ standing between Mexico and America in these compelling, emotional poems. Written with humor and sincerity” (Newsweek).
Named a Best Book of the Year by Newsweek and NPR.
In this “devastating debut” (Publishers Weekly), 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, with a unique voice that makes him a poet to watch.
“The son of Mexican immigrants, Olivarez celebrates his Mexican-American identity and examines how those two sides conflict in a striking collection of poems.” —USA Today - sortTitle
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October 1, 2018
Olivarez celebrates his family and Mexican-American identity in his hopeful, waggish, and devastating debut collection. He has a critical eye for how Mexicans and Mexican-Americans are observed, labeled, and categorized, writing that “it’s hard for one body to contain two countries,/ the countries go to war & it’s hard to remember you are loved by both/ sides or any sides.” This concept ignites a paralyzing hyperconsciousness that offers a glimpse into the poet’s oftentimes conflicting identities and provides the inventive structure of the eponymous opening poem. “Mexican woman (illegal) and Mexican man (illegal)/ have a Mexican (illegal)-American (citizen)./ is the baby more Mexican or American?” he asks. Olivarez is sharply critical of American media portrayals of Mexican-American culture: “when i watch the news i hear my name, but never see my face. every other commercial is for taco bell.” Olivarez shines when he embraces the flaws and the grandeur of his background. His poem “Gentefication” imagines a neighborhood being reclaimed from gentrifiers and a people’s commune taking its place: “we trade tortillas for haircuts, nopales for healthcare,/ poems for groceries, & if all you can do/ is eat the food, we ask that you wash your dishes.” In the neighborhood of Olivarez’s imagination, “the whole block is alive/ & not for sale.”
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September 1, 2018
Featured in The Breakbeat Poets (2015), Olivarez debuts his first solo poetry project, a high-octane take on the rhythms and contradictions of life as a first-generation child of Mexican parents. Early on, Olivarez differentiates between Chicanos (Mexican Americans), Mexicans (who immigrated to the U.S.), and Mexicanos (still residing in Mexico). For Olivarez, the world is defined by these and other limits, and his poems occupy spaces of liminality between law and crime, English and Spanish, hard work and higher education. In "Hecky Naw," the speaker questions the escape value of a college degree: "isn't that what Harvard / was supposed to buy / where the border ended / in a boardroom." This perpetual transition from borderland to mainstream is revisited in "My Family Never Finished Migrating We Just Stopped," in which the speaker laments the hardships of migrants, "worn thin as guitar strings, / so we can follow the music home." A compelling work that embodies the immediacy of live performance, to be read alongside Chinaka Hodge's Dated Emcees (2016) and the anthology The End of Chiraq (2018).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)
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