Good morning,
I’m writing this in between Canada Day and the Fourth of July while reviewing photos from Italy and considering what it means to belong.
The birthright citizenship case came out last week and altered the landscape of federal law. It soon may happen that a child born in one U.S. state to non-citizen parents will be deemed a citizen, while a child born in another state will not. A patchwork of rights and privileges. A nation of nationless kids.
In Italy last month, I recalled my would-be childhood. Up until three months before my birth, my parents, American citizens, lived in Milan. I was slated to be born in a Swiss hospital across the border.
Switzerland doesn’t confer birthright citizenship. Neither does Italy, or most of Europe. If the U.S. didn’t provide citizenship for children of citizens born abroad, I too could have entered that nebulous terrain of statelessness.
It’s a crazy hypothetical, given the privilege into which I arrived. Worlds apart from refugees in the U.S. whose legal futures are now even more imperiled than before.
Nonetheless a reminder that nations make the rules for who is included. Who matters. Who gets a voice.
Maybe the nation state has become too large of a concept. Unworkable. Our brains are only wired to remember and interact with a much smaller number of people, at the level of our neighbors and communities.
It’s possible to be cruel in the abstract when we consider people outside of our sphere as “others.” It’s much more difficult, I would hope, to be cruel to people inside our smaller sphere.
Maybe this ruling is the start of true federalism—each U.S. state for itself. And within some states, feudal-like gated communities surrounded by slums.
We’ve read such stories. We’ve written them, too. Let this help keep our eyes open to what comes.
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My favorite pictures from a recent trip all feature architecture. Stark lines of ancient buildings layered with heartbreak and hope.
A door opens, its threshold inviting and warm.
Elsewhere, a window shuts. Crushed fingers on the sill.
In a dream I reach the highest floor and know how to climb down.
The archaic torso. The beachside house. The walls we build from stone.
A door opens. We step through.
P.S. If you happen to be in northern Michigan on July 17, check out the Dunes Review reading in Traverse City! I have a story in the issue and would be there if time and space allowed.