Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

The author’s search for identity is the dominant theme in the narrative. As an undocumented person, as a homosexual man, and as a racial minority, the author struggles to determine how he functions in society. After leaving the Philippines, his first encounter with identity comes when he is enrolled in an American school. There, he discovers that he is not white, not black, and not like the majority of the Hispanic and Asian students he encounters. Instead, he is located in the undetermined middle ground between a number of these identities. He is neither Asian nor Hispanic though is technicality a part of both identities. His nationality complicates his racial identity and it is through others’ racial struggles (particularly African American writers) that he begins to define himself in opposition to the hegemonic white American majority. The author’s first identity challenge is to determine his particular intersection of race and nationality in a strange new environment.

Once the author begins to understand his identity as a Filipino male, his next issue is attempting to determine his identity regarding his sexuality. Empowered by the media he consumes, he quickly realizes that he is a gay man. After a short struggle, he announces this sexuality to his classmates.