Editor’s note: This poem was submitted as part of the America 250 student essay contest held by the Times Free Press and Chattanooga Area Historical Association.
What is an American?
A question that’s age old
One asked by our ancestors
Yes, a question ingrained into our folds.
A question that poured out of Madison’s quill
A question that roared out Washington’s commands
A question that was written in Hamilton’s letters
And this question that remains in everyone’s mind.
I am 18
Legally able to vote
Legally able to go to prison
Yet I still feel like anything but an adult
Tyranny, fear, hysteria
That’s all the news tells me is what makes America
I disagree
I believe in a different America
One that remains true in my heart
The one that was created to fight injustice and oppression
One that was crafted through blood and bones of enslaved individuals
One that introduced the world to sustainable staple crops like potatoes
And ripped native families apart as seizure of their land took place
America spread jazz and funky swing music
While also having hatred and racial bias plague our nation
What is an American?
Some would say it’s a taxpayer,
Or a (white, male) landowner
Or “a natural born citizen.”
A citizen?
I question that statement
This definition was decided in 1867
By those who couldn’t possibly know this America
The one where a citizen is
a sharecropper,
a politician,
a housekeeper,
a nurse,
an immigrant,
a murderer,
a blasphemer,
a drug addict,
a dropout,
a Democrat,
and a Republican.
America has become them all
The good and bad
One can not exist without the other
In any country but especially not in ours.
I am the daughter of an immigrant
I am also the daughter of a native-born American
Being American is more than just a nationality
It is my heritage
Is is a reflection of the struggle my African American ancestors fought
It is the cultivation of resilient family who raised me
An American is someone who loves this country as much as I do
Someone who believes in its potential
The beauty and the shame within its existence
Who want to make it better not for themselves or for others
But for those that come after them
I am an American
Because I love that country that hates me.
Yulissa Gerard, 18, is a graduating senior at the Baylor School.