Abstract
When Isabel Allende swore her allegiance to the United States in 2003 and “absolutely and entirely” abjured “allegiance and fidelity” to other nations, she was in the process of writing her third memoir, My Invented Country, in which she concluded that she had “many nationalities” and belonged to several lands. How are we to interpret the obvious contradictions between the two statements? How are we to make sense of Allende’s views about nation and nationality? How can we understand Allende’s US citizenship in light of her cosmopolitan notion of national belonging within the Americas?
I have also created a version of myself that has no nationality, or, more accurately, many nationalities. I don’t belong to one land, but to several, or perhaps only to the ambit of the fiction I write.
—Isabel Allende, My Invented Country 1
I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.
—US Oath of Allegiance2
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Notes
Isabel Allende, My Invented Country, trans. Margaret Sayers Peden (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 178.
US Department of Homeland Security, “US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Naturalization Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America,” US Department of Homeland Security. http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=facd6db8d 7e37210VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=dd7ffe9dd4aa321 0VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD (Accessed May 7, 2011).
This is found on the back cover of Isabel Allende, My Invented Country, trans. Margaret Sayers Peden (New York: Harper Collins, 2003).
Isabel Allende, “Book Description. My Invented Country,” Harper Collins Publishers, http://www.harpercollins.com/books/My-Invented-Country-IsabelAllende?isbn=9780060545673&HCHP=TB_My+Invented+Country (Accessed October 27, 2011).
US Department of Homeland Security, “Yearbook of Immigration Statistics 2003 Petitions for Naturalizations Filed, Persons Naturalized, and Petitions for Naturalizations Denied: Fiscal Years 1907–2003, Table 1,” US Department of Homeland Security, http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/year book/2003/2003NATZtext.pdf (Accessed May 19, 2011).
See American-Citizenship Organization, “Naturalization Application: Coming to America: For Foreigners, Immigrants, Workers and Visitors to the United States,” American-Citizenship Organization, http://www.american-citizenshi.org/naturalization/guidelines.php (Accessed September 15, 2011). Also see
Immigration Direct: Simplifying Immigration, “US Citizenship and Naturalization Process,” Immigration Direct: Simplifying Immigration, http://www.immigrationdirect.com/resources/process.jsp (Accessed September 15, 2011). The website states, “The time it takes to be naturalized varies from one local office to another. It has been taking about two years to process an application.”
Isabel Allende in an interview with Heathcote, “Living in the Moment,” in Conversations with Isabel Allende, Revised Edition, ed. John Rodden (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), 278.
Marcus G. Raskin and Robert Spero, The Four Freedoms under Siege: the Clear and Present Danger from our National Security State (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007), 226.
Douglas Kellner, From 9/11 to Terror War: The Dangers of the Bush Legacy (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2003), 39.
Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), xvi.
George W. Bush, “Transcript of President Bush’s Address to a Joint Session of Congress on Thursday Night, September 20, 2001,” CNN, http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/20/gen.bush.transcript (Accessed September 2, 2011).
See Herbert N. Foerstel, The Patriot Act: A Documentary and Reference Guide (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008), 95, 132. As Foerstel writes about noncitizens legally residing within the United States, “under the Patriot Act, they are deportable for virtually any associational activity with a designated ‘terrorist organization,’ even if the alien’s support has no connection to an act of violence much less terrorism” (99).
One such example was in Southern California in June 2004 where US customs and border patrol officers made sweeping raids of immigrant neighborhoods, mainly places where American citizens of Mexican descent lived. See Paul Spickard, Almost All Aliens: Immigration, Race, and Colonialism in American History and Identity (New York: Routledge, 2007), 443.
Pierre Nora, “General Introduction: Between Memory and History,” in Rethinking the French Past: Realms of Memory, vol. 1, Conflicts and Divisions, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, English-Language edition edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 3.
Joshua Mack, Karma 101: What Goes around Comes around— and What You Can Do about It (Gloucester, UK: Four Winds Press, 2002), 4.
Ariel Dorfman, Other Septembers, Many Americas: Selected Provocations 1980–2004 (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2004), xiv.
Ariel Dorfman, as quoted in Rodrigo Dorfman, “American Shadows, Video 2: ‘Patriotism,’” filmed 2006, “POV Borders: American Identity” video, PBS, http://www.pbs.org/pov/borders/2006/ch_americanshadows.html (Accessed May 27, 2011).
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, UK: Verso, 1983), 15.
Liisa Malkki, “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees,” in Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology, ed. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 61.
Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), xiv. Also as referred to in
Janelle L. Wilson, Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2005), 37.
Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 3.
Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, “Introduction: Situating Subjectivity in Women’s Autobiographical Practices,” in Women, Autobiography, Theory, A Reader, ed. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), 30.
See M. M. Bakhtin, “The Dialogic Imagination,” in The Bakhtin Reader, ed. Pam Morris (London, UK: Arnold, 1994), 74–87. Also, for an excellent explanation of heteroglossia, see
Sue Vice, Introducing Bakhtin (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1997), 18–44.
Julia Kristeva, Nations without Nationalism, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 41.
Carey McWilliams, California: The Great Exception (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1949), 7.
John Lechte and Maria Margaroni, “Love and Death by Any Other Name…,” in Julia Kristeva: Live Theory (London, UK: Continuum, 2004), 74.
Gupta and Ferguson, “Culture, Power, Place: Ethnography at the End of an Era,” in Culture, Power, Place, ed. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 6.
See Isabel Allende, Mi país inventado (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Debolsillo, 2003), 220.
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© 2013 Bonnie M. Craig
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Craig, B.M. (2013). The Politics of National Belonging. In: Rewriting American Identity in the Fiction and Memoirs of Isabel Allende. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137337580_2
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