Overall Impressions
Citizen Illegal is a small book of poems published by Haymarket Books out of Chicago. It’s Olivarez’s debut and a sincere and honest effort at writing something genuine. Olivarez asks multiple questions in this series of poems – most that centre around identity as a Mexican, American and white-passing person of colour. There are poems about love, friendship, his parents, his experiences moving from one city to another and many more. I think this series of poems starts strong and it keeps hitting as you go through it.
Language, Humour and Identity
José has a particular style of writing that I enjoy. Though the writing itself in Citizen Illegal is simple, it challenges you from sentence to sentence – perhaps as self-reflection of what you as the reader believe or at your assumptions of what he is saying- your biases. Sometimes it does this just to point out an ugly truth about life, or a humourous way we try to hide ourselves from … surprise! ourselves.
An example of what I mean from “The Day My Little Brother Gets Accepted into Grad School” :
“a drink. my dad prays between gulps. my mom
drinks when god blinks. my family: two fists
colliding. nothing strong enough to stop
my parents from raising a home in a city..“
It’s powerful stuff! As you go on there’s a series of repeating poems called “Mexican Heaven” that you find in each section. Sometimes they’re thought provoking, other times funny. Often both.
My favourite poems in this collection, however, were: “Ode to Scottie Pippen”, “Not-Love is a Season”, “My Therapist Says Make Friends with Your Monsters”, “I Ask Jesus How I Got So White…”
Without dissecting the poetry individually I will say that overall Citizen Illegal is an impressive collection of contemporary poetry and as I personally love reading poetry by new voices with something deeply true and personal to say. I thought it was worth the read! Hoping to read more by him someday.
To read more of my writing on books, click here for some book reviews, and here for some deeper insights. If you’d like to purchase Citizen Illegal, you can get a copy at Bookshop.org and Bookshop UK which supports independent bookstores around the US and UK.
