00;00;01;19 - 00;00;31;09 Kelsey Timmerman [Theme music] Timmerman: I'm Kelsey Timmerman. Today on the Facing Project, I talk with Daisy Hernández: an essayist, memoirist, and journalist whose work explores the intersections of race, ethnicity, immigration, class and sexuality, and in her latest book, “Citizenship: Notes on an American Myth,” Daisy offers a provocative and deeply personal examination of what it means to be American. Blending memoir, history, and cultural criticism, she challenges the stories we tell about belonging and who gets to tell them. 00;00;31;12 - 00;00;55;03 Kelsey Timmerman Daisy writes, “We are citizens of the stories we tell.” The idea that citizenship isn't just legal status but narrative sits at the heart of our conversation, because for some of us, citizenship is something we've never had to think about, and for others, it shapes nearly every aspect of life. Today, Daisy shares her journey and invites us to reconsider our own. 00;00;55;05 - 00;01;04;01 Kelsey Timmerman Stay with us. [Theme music] 00;01;04;03 - 00;01;12;26 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: Welcome back to the Facing Project. I'm Kelsey Timmerman. Today I'm joined by Daisy Hernández, author of “Citizenship: Notes on an American Myth.” Welcome, Daisy. 00;01;12;27 - 00;01;14;15 Daisy Hernández Hernández: Thank you so much for having me. 00;01;14;17 - 00;01;41;02 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: So your book really opened my eyes to a lot of questions that I have not asked of myself or, I guess, our society or country before. So, thank you so much for doing the work and letting us into your personal life story around this topic as well. So, you know, you write that it's easy for someone to forget that race and citizenship are social constructs when the story favors them. 00;01;41;02 - 00;02;09;16 Kelsey Timmerman And so, like, I'm a middle class white guy, born and raised in the rural Midwest and still living in the Midwest in terms of diversity; you know, you got your Methodists and Catholics, you got your Lutherans and Baptists, [laughter] and like, that's about it. I've had the luxury of not having to think about citizenship because it favored me. So for those of us who've never worried about our papers, what do we need to understand about citizenship? 00;02;09;22 - 00;02;35;12 Daisy Hernández Hernández: Yeah. So the analogy that I share in the book is that, that many of us are familiar with, is that, if you walk into a store of any kind - let's say you walk into Best Buy - you know, if you are a white man, a white woman, you don't necessarily expect for security to follow you around the store. But if you are a black person, you may very well be expecting that to happen. 00;02;35;12 - 00;02;53;09 Daisy Hernández And it may very well happen. So one group of people can go into Best Buy and don't necessarily have to think about, you know, there's their relationship with the store, with what's going to happen next for them. While another group of people very much do have to think about how they're going to be seen and how they're going to be treated. 00;02;53;12 - 00;03;17;00 Daisy Hernández And so similarly with citizenship, if you have it, you don't think about it. So you don't think about when you go to register your child at school, you don't think about- You don't give a second thought to giving your address, to pulling out a Social Security number. You- When your child is ready to go to college, you know you don't have to think about whether they can go to college. 00;03;17;07 - 00;03;46;17 Daisy Hernández It's a matter of money, probably, and paying for it. But it's not a situation in which the student will not be able to go because they won't qualify for any scholarship or any grant because your child is undocumented. The same relationship, obviously, with police, if you're walking down the street, and especially this past year during the Trump administration, so many immigrant families are literally, you know, they- a lot of families are mixed status, which means that they have different relationships to citizenship. 00;03;46;17 - 00;04;13;08 Daisy Hernández So I grew up in a mixed status home. I had birthright citizenship. My father was a political refugee and had access to a green card that way. We had other family members who were undocumented who were being petitioned through marriage for a green card. So we all had a really different relationship. And it means that you have families where maybe one person feels safe enough to go outside and go to the store, go to the pharmacy, but then you have other family members who are terrified to leave their home right now. 00;04;13;11 - 00;04;43;19 Daisy Hernández So, yeah, so our relationship with citizenship is very similar to our relationship with race or with sex. You know, same thing around issues of gender. If you're cisgender, you know, you leave the house, you don't think about how anyone's going to look at you and what you're wearing because you're just in a normative gender way. But if you know that people have assigned or are going to think of you as being assigned male at birth and you're wearing a dress, you know you're going to be treated in a really different way. 00;04;43;19 - 00;05;14;01 Daisy Hernández And so hence you are thinking about it all the time. But I also brought up race, because part of what we've seen over the years is a dramatic change with how the federal government monitors the borders. And so, 1965 was when we had legislation that did away with racial quotas on who could come to the United States, etc. however, we basically replaced it with, “What passport do you have?” 00;05;14;04 - 00;05;41;27 Daisy Hernández Many people don't know that in 1965, when we did away with those racist quotas, we put in place for the first time quotas on how many people could come to the US from Latin America. I know I was surprised to find that out. I didn't know that when I started working on this book. But it explains how overnight you suddenly had thousands and thousands of people from Latin America who were undocumented simply because of congressional legislation. 00;05;42;02 - 00;05;58;26 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: Yeah. So some families that have different, you know, different family members have different status. So there's like a designated person in that family is like, okay, you're the person who goes to the grocery store because you're the least likely to have an issue if you get stopped. Does that, like happen, all around? 00;05;58;29 - 00;06;23;12 Daisy Hernández Hernández: I obviously can't speak for all immigrant families, but yeah, if you're talking with families, I was at an event where someone was literally talking about, you know, he's the person that goes out for his family, specifically for his mom and his sister. I don't know that I would say it's designated like, “We have now come together as a family and decided,” but, obviously, you know who in the family has privilege right now and who doesn't, who's, who's most vulnerable and who's less vulnerable. 00;06;23;13 - 00;06;44;17 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: Yeah, there's a, I think, a story that you shared that really gets at this, the squishy-ness of citizenship and race and all that, is, you write about a moment as a teenager sitting with a boy from the Dominican Republic, and, like, you had an experience that it kind of shifted the way that you thought about, like, citizenship and race. 00;06;44;17 - 00;06;52;06 Kelsey Timmerman Can you take us back to that moment? I think you were sipping on lemonade and a picnic table and your mom and dad were there. 00;06;52;08 - 00;07;33;02 Daisy Hernández Hernández: Yeah. So the context that I should give for this is, because this might be surprising to people, but we in the Latino community in the United States - I should say Latino communities, plural - in the United States, we have a very, a fair amount of racism within our community. And so people generally, I think when Americans say, “Oh, there's lots of Latinos here,” they're usually talking about someone who is indigenous in appearance, brown skin, like, they have sort of usually a very specific image in their minds of, of what they mean when they say a Latino. 00;07;33;05 - 00;07;59;02 Daisy Hernández But in reality, we come in every shade and we have blond, you know, blue-eyed Latinas, and we have Afro-Latinas and obviously indigenous Latinas and, and folks who get described sometimes as mixed race or mestizos, lots of, and lots of racial categories in Latin America as well. But in my family, my father very much saw himself as a white man from Cuba. 00;07;59;02 - 00;08;22;20 Daisy Hernández He saw my mother, who’s from Colombia, as being a white woman, even though she's 50%, almost 50% indigenous because we did her DNA test and, and she, and he considered my sister and I to also be white. And I grew up in a very different context. I was born and raised in New Jersey and grew up in the white/black binary system of the United States. 00;08;22;21 - 00;08;42;24 Daisy Hernández And people made it very clear to me at a young age that they did not consider me to be white. I will also say I look a little different from my dad. I looked, I looked probably more mixed than my dad did when he was younger. But yeah, my father, my father is - well, he's passed now - but my father was a racist. 00;08;42;24 - 00;09;08;08 Daisy Hernández He was anti-black, and he never wanted us to have interactions with anyone who was black. And we were in a predominantly white community in New Jersey, the descendants of Italians, of the Irish, of the Germans, of British. And so, yes, so I saw myself being in solidarity with anyone who was Latino and including this young boy that, we were, we were both teenagers. 00;09;08;08 - 00;09;32;28 Daisy Hernández It was possibly the start of a romantic relationship at 15, except that he went to a different high school, which at 15 is, as you know, is a huge barrier to burgeoning romance. I could not imagine how much we would have in common, because we went to different schools and had different lives in that sense. But, but yeah, but I very much saw us as being part, in my mind, 00;09;32;29 - 00;10;08;08 Daisy Hernández we were part of the same racial group because I knew Latinos were racialized. And my dad came home that day, essentially caught us in, you know, hanging out in the front yard and, and was absolutely horrible to this teenage boy, and, you know, screamed vulgarities at him, and, and kicked him out of our home and so forth. And it was, it was, it was a very important moment in my life because I've beaten- because I could see how differently my father and I thought about race. I already had, 00;10;08;09 - 00;10;33;01 Daisy Hernández I already understood that we had differences, but I had never thought that he would go that far. And also the teenage boy, when we talked later, because of course, that was not the end of the story [laughs] with him. But when we talked later, he, he told me that he was so offended that my father identified him as being black, and he was Dominican. 00;10;33;01 - 00;11;00;20 Daisy Hernández And when I look back now, most people who would see this young man would probably identify him as being a young black man before identifying him probably as being Dominican. But it was my first understanding of internalized racism, of how we were hurting each other with this. It was- it made me realize, like, you know, in the context of answering the question on the census, “Are you Latino? 00;11;00;26 - 00;11;19;11 Daisy Hernández What race are you?” My father and this teenage boy probably would have answered in the same way, because he's the- the boy saw himself as white, and my father saw himself as white, and I saw myself as being mixed because no one was identifying me as white or black. So, yeah, that was an important moment. 00;11;19;12 - 00;11;37;05 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: Yeah. I mean, it really stood out to me. And then the fact that there is the census that the, the government wants you to label yourself as something. And so I want to get at that a little bit. But one of the things that jumped out to me was, in terms of like Asian Americans, there was like a bunch of different options, 00;11;37;05 - 00;11;45;26 Kelsey Timmerman I think, at one point in time. And then for like Latino, there was just like nonwhite Hispanic or something maybe. 00;11;45;28 - 00;12;17;15 Daisy Hernández Hernández: Yeah, this, this I think is an important point that we don't hear very often in the conversations around whether there should be a citizenship question on the census, whether there should be a question around Latino as a racial category or as a category separate from the race categories, is the fact that, that, “Are you Chinese?” has been on there from, you know, from very, very early on in the census, and so that I could see how there would be confusion because there would be other countries listed as well. 00;12;17;15 - 00;12;36;18 Daisy Hernández Over time, the questions have been placed and removed and replaced. But there have been questions like, “Are you from Japan? Are you from the Philippines?” So that you could see, you know, how someone would look at that and say, “Well, why are you not asking if I'm from Guatemala?” [laughter] “Why aren't you asking if I'm from El Salvador or Peru? 00;12;36;19 - 00;12;38;08 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: There's no consistency, is it? 00;12;38;10 - 00;13;16;01 Daisy Hernández Hernández: Yeah, there isn't consistency because people from, from Asia have been racialized in such a particular way from the beginning of, from the beginning of this country, in ways that has not been true for people from Latin America. And so, so there's confusion for that reason. There's also confusion because the census has treated us as a racial category, even while they're saying “Hispanic is not a race,” but yet they produce reports saying, you know, Latinos, you know, these are- this is what we know about Latinos and homeownership or higher education or things like that, or poverty levels. 00;13;16;01 - 00;13;45;18 Daisy Hernández Right? And it's all data that we want to have. However, we have to also recognize that, you know, we're using, we're using that category of Latino to blur the incredible racial inequities that happen among Latinos themselves. Right? So I included in the book a reference to a study that was done looking at, you know, the rate of infants dying. 00;13;45;18 - 00;14;06;10 Daisy Hernández And when you looked at Latinos, you might see a positive number like, you know, number that was actually like, okay, we're not losing that many Latino babies. But when you looked at the race categories, we were losing babies. We were losing black Latino babies in that first year of life. Right? So that was being masked by putting us all together. 00;14;06;10 - 00;14;11;25 Daisy Hernández And of course, the numbers are just as important when we look at indigenous Latinos, too. 00;14;12;01 - 00;14;18;05 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: Yeah. [Soft, somber electronic music] 00;14;18;07 - 00;14;42;27 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: In your in your book, towards the end, you kind of explain, like, word choices that you use, like, you know, going- Before I read your book, I was like, okay, I'm, you know, Latino, you know, immigrant, migrant, Hispanic. Like, where do- I was like, I don't know if I quite know how to use these terms. And like, after reading your book, I understand why now because it is, like, there's a lot of agendas that go with this. 00;14;42;27 - 00;14;59;07 Kelsey Timmerman People use the same term for to mean different things. So I was hoping that you could help our listeners just like, understand some of the complexities of these words and what people should try to say when they're, you know, trying to say the right thing. 00;14;59;08 - 00;15;26;12 Daisy Hernández Hernández: Yeah, yeah. You know, the word Hispanic, which is- it's from the 1970s, and it grouped together- Initially it was going to group together Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. And those were two communities that, even though back in the 70s had really, were very different geographically, with Puerto Ricans obviously being on the island, but also in like New York City, in the New England area, and then Mexicans still largely being in California in the southwest and Texas. 00;15;26;14 - 00;15;59;07 Daisy Hernández However, there are similarities in terms of the levels, you know, just racial discrimination, poverty, lack of access to education because of racial discrimination. So those two groups really had a lot in common. But then the Nixon administration was very focused on just anyone who speaks Spanish, [laughs] which included the Cubans in Miami, who as a group were much wealthier and of course, whiter, and had a really different experience in the US than Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. 00;15;59;07 - 00;16;20;03 Daisy Hernández But they got grouped into that category. And there were, there were community leaders who were part of that. So the word Hispanic was not like just imposed on us from the outside. There's a wonderful book, scholarly book - “Making Hispanics,” I think, is the title - that talks about how this came about, but that the government was wanting, you know, and community leaders were wanting one term that could bring them together. 00;16;20;03 - 00;16;43;25 Daisy Hernández But from the start, they were really, really different communities. And then we had the emergence of Latino, which has become very, very accepted. And I think a lot of people- I would say, in fact, I would go as far as to say most people, both inside and outside the community, use the word Latinos rather than Hispanic, which has become more of a, a government identifier. 00;16;43;26 - 00;17;14;28 Daisy Hernández This is all in English, obviously. If you are in Spanish, you know, and if you're in a Latino, predominantly Spanish speaking community, very few people will say Latino because they are very attached to their country of origin. So my father, until the day he died, he was a cubano, my mother will always be a colombiana. You know, we have friends who will always be, you know, salvadoreñas, you know; they identify with their specific country, and will oftentimes say hispanas or hispanos, 00;17;15;00 - 00;17;42;15 Daisy Hernández in Spanish. That's much more common in my own observations over the years. That's still much more common in Spanish than, than Latino. And there's actually, there are- there are activists who have wanted to bring in the word Latino. And then what you had was the emergence in recent years of Latinx. And that gets pronounced really differently. I think I'm pronouncing it differently than others, but ‘LAT - in - ecks’ or ‘lat - EEN - ecks,’ and that's still much more in academic, in colleges and activist circles. 00;17;42;15 - 00;18;08;00 Daisy Hernández And it was a way to express gender inclusivity, because ‘Latino’ it uses the ‘O’ to include women. When I give talks, I will- I like to say I am referring to all of you as Latinas, and that includes the men and everyone else. So I do it that way sometimes. Latinx, though, is not a term that is easily translated into Spanish because of that ‘X’ that sound ‘X.’ 00;18;08;00 - 00;18;31;21 Daisy Hernández So in Spanish you'll have Latina. So that's a new term as well that you might hear there and abouts. And then we have ‘immigrants’ and we have ‘migrants.’ What's the difference? So immigrants with an ‘I’ - now this is where I'm going to put on my little, you know, English school teacher - But immigrant with an ‘I’ means you are people who are coming to the country. 00;18;31;22 - 00;18;53;10 Daisy Hernández Emigrant: Emigrant with an ‘E’ means you're leaving the country. Small distinction, but a large one at the same time. And then most of us, many people are now using ‘migrants.’ And so historically in the US, because we have been a country that has had people arriving from all over the world, we have largely talked about ourselves as immigrants, 00;18;53;13 - 00;19;26;07 Daisy Hernández the idea being you come and you stay essentially, right? In Europe, they are more likely to talk about migrants. They don't have the same kind of history with people coming and settling that, that we do here in the US. And so when you had in 2015 and thereabouts, when you had what gets described as a refugee crisis, where you had millions of people leaving Syria, leaving different homelands and essentially arriving in Western Europe, you basically had journalists referring to them as migrants. 00;19;26;07 - 00;19;55;19 Daisy Hernández And we've had scholars who say migrants is the right word for Latinos in the US because many people, many Latinos do not just come and stay. There is now, thanks to airplanes and Facetime and videos and so video calls. There's more of a two way relationship. And even a place like Mexico, which shares the border, there has always been just so much movement for communities, so it has never been, 00;19;55;20 - 00;20;27;19 Daisy Hernández “I just came and stayed here for 40 years and I never went back to the, the home country.” So there have been scholars who said migrant is the right word. I decided to use the word immigrant throughout the book, because I feel that right now, part of the political agenda from the Trump administration and others is to use the word migrant to suggest that, that people from Latin America don't belong here, that they're not coming here to make home, to make families, to make their lives here. 00;20;27;22 - 00;20;32;06 Daisy Hernández So they're, they're using that word to underscore this kind of transitory... 00;20;32;07 - 00;20;35;19 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: Makes it more temporary, like you're, but you're going to be leaving. 00;20;35;20 - 00;20;50;24 Daisy Hernández Hernández: A very temporary nature to it. Like, we have a right. And the implication is, we have, you're not really an American as well. Whereas, you know, we never spoke about Italian migrants in the US. We never talked about British migrants. [Laughing] 00;20;50;24 - 00;20;51;18 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: Yeah. 00;20;51;21 - 00;20;54;03 Daisy Hernández Hernández: We never talked about, yeah, 00;20;54;04 - 00;21;10;05 Daisy Hernández Irish migrants. So I grew up in a world- I was coming of age in the 1980s; everyone was an immigrant, whether or not, you know, and I had all the aunties who were going back and forth as well to Colombia, but it was still like you were still an immigrant. So I'm embracing that. 00;21;10;08 - 00;21;34;04 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: Yeah. You know, I grew up in a very rural setting. There was a farmer had tomatoes that would be like the field right up next to us. And just around the corner, we had folks from, I think, Mexico primarily that basically lived in, like, plywood boxes with barely any windows and came out and picked the tomatoes by hand. 00;21;34;04 - 00;21;55;16 Kelsey Timmerman And we referred to them as migrants then. And it's just a wild as, like, a kid, just fully accepting this is the way of the world and not questioning it until, like, later. Like looking back, I can't believe just right around the corner from our house, you know, the migrants would come in, and we would have kids that come in to school just part of the year, then move on. 00;21;55;16 - 00;22;03;17 Kelsey Timmerman And just like, it didn't occupy that much of my thought or trying to understand the deeper meaning, it was just like, it's this accepted thing. 00;22;03;19 - 00;22;30;11 Daisy Hernández Hernández: Yeah. And what's so amazing to me about that is, a point that I make in the book that I hope readers will take, which is that, that, that these families would not be considered Americans, would not be considered to be citizens or part of like the political body of the US, even though, as you're describing, they are here, they are in the schools, they are on the land, they are making sure that the rest of us who are official citizens have food on the table. 00;22;30;11 - 00;23;06;05 Daisy Hernández And so part of what I, you know, drawing on the work of this legal scholar, Professor Achiume at UCLA, she talks about the fact that, you know, the United States has been so deeply involved in the day to day lives of people who live beyond our geographic borders. Right? And so her question and proposal, which I embrace, is, you know, if you have families like the ones you were describing, who their day to day lives were so deeply impacted, influenced, shaped by policy coming from Washington, then how are they not already a part of our political body? 00;23;06;06 - 00;23;16;15 Daisy Hernández How are they not essentially citizens and everything, except documents, you know, because their lives have been so much more influenced by this country than, than anything else? 00;23;16;17 - 00;23;38;17 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: Yeah. I mean, like, still, it's such an important part of our, of our society, like three quarters of farmworkers are people who've come into our country from elsewhere. And, you know, those people are the ones that are worried about, do they have the right papers? What happens if they get pulled over? Your aunt does or your brother does. 00;23;38;18 - 00;23;44;05 Kelsey Timmerman And but the truth is, like, our food system falls apart without these folks. 00;23;44;06 - 00;24;09;18 Daisy Hernández Hernández: Absolutely. And there were so many- To me, one of the things that I learned in working on this book was that there were so many key moments when, when the federal government wanted to police the border, the US-Mexico border, in a specific way, and so they would pass legislations, but then an exception would be made for the agricultural industry, because they still needed the labor. 00;24;09;18 - 00;24;30;29 Daisy Hernández So, and especially once the Chinese Exclusion Act passed, they didn't have that access to, to those men. Right? So they needed access to men from Mexico who they could pay very little to and kick them out once they once the harvest was done. And so there would just be all these, you know, they had to now, you know, come- they had to, like, pay a poll tax or they had to do a literacy test. 00;24;30;29 - 00;24;33;25 Daisy Hernández But there would be exceptions made for this one particular industry. 00;24;33;26 - 00;25;05;05 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: Yeah. So getting into politics sort of a little bit, your book shows, like, how deeply personal and complicated citizenship is, as we've been talking about, even within families. And so you write about political and cultural divides with your cousin. And how do you make sense of those differences? And asking for a friend, [laughter] how do you manage your relationships across those differences? 00;25;05;11 - 00;25;26;25 Daisy Hernández Hernández: This was such an important chapter in the book for me to write, because so many of us are going through this, and I grew up in a family where I did not agree with the political ideas of, of many family members, and it's become much more acute, obviously, in the last ten years. And so, yes, so I write about my, and my my uncle. 00;25;26;25 - 00;25;56;13 Daisy Hernández Oh my goodness. I write about my cousin who is a gay Latino. He's from Cuba; political refugee; has been in the country for over 20 years; does, did, at the time that I was writing the book, did not have citizenship; was in a process with a green card, but, complicated, as everything oftentimes is around immigration in the US is complicated, and he very much wanted Trump to win all of the elections. 00;25;56;13 - 00;26;18;22 Daisy Hernández And if he, if he could have voted, he would have voted for Trump. And I was very taken with the idea and the possibility that there was a political divide between us and that we could, we could close that political divide if we had civil conversations. We sat down to really talk. And so we did. We had some conversations. 00;26;18;27 - 00;26;44;02 Daisy Hernández And what I learned was that the political divide could not be closed because it actually is not a political divide. So a political divide is when we have $3 million and my cousin thinks we should invest those $3 million into the small business initiative, and I think we should invest the $3 million into the local public high school. 00;26;44;03 - 00;27;15;12 Daisy Hernández That's a political difference, right? But, but my cousin believes that you can and should have a, a leader, a government leader who can order the executions of thousands of people in order to save the country from communism, from socialism, from woke people, etc., etc.. And, and I believe we should live in a country where no one is allowed to unilaterally order the executions of people. 00;27;15;12 - 00;27;38;24 Daisy Hernández And so that's a moral question. That's not a political question anymore. Right? We agreed in the mid 20th century, slowly but surely, we agreed that we should no longer allow people in the United States to lynch black men, black women, black children, Mexican men who are also lynched in the South and in the southwest and in California. We agreed. 00;27;38;24 - 00;28;05;00 Daisy Hernández And that was a moral question that we decided that we came to an answer. And so, so I say that and of course, police brutality continued in many other ways. And, and the new Jim Crow arose, hence the book “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander. So, but there were, there have been these like moments of being at a, at a crossroads of questions of, of, of morals, basically. 00;28;05;00 - 00;28;30;19 Daisy Hernández And so part of why I wanted to write that was to come to understand that, but to also allow myself to experience the grief. I had a very pivotal conversation with my cousin that I narrate in the book where we were talking about not the United States; we were talking about another country, that had a dictatorship. And my cousin said, “I understand that dictator ordered the murder of thousands of people, and he was right to do it because he saved his country from communism.” 00;28;30;19 - 00;28;57;01 Daisy Hernández And that was the moment where I realized, you know, this- we're not going to close the gap. There isn't a gap to close. This is having very, very different value systems. And so I need to feel my grief because this isn't about giving my cousin more data or better articles. It's not about that. You know, I will also say, at the risk of getting very controversial on your podcast, that the same is true about Palestine. 00;28;57;01 - 00;29;18;02 Daisy Hernández I've had people- I've given speeches or talks, and then people afterwards want to email me articles to support the genocide of Palestinians. And it's not a political question. You know, I do not believe in having a world in which a government can just eliminate a group of people based on their religion or their ethnicity or anything else, for example. 00;29;18;03 - 00;29;40;11 Daisy Hernández So, so these are really, these are really hard experiences. And, and part of it is figuring out, as I was trying to figure out in this chapter in the book, was, did my cousin and I have the kind of relationship that could bear the weight of this pain? And, and I came to the conclusion, no, we, we did not. We did not grow up together. 00;29;40;11 - 00;30;03;25 Daisy Hernández We did not have the level of intimacy that could carry this. My one regret is that I did not write about another cousin who also believes very similar, you know, has very similar value system. She and I do have a relationship. We did grow up together long distance, but I grew up seeing her in the summers. And, and she's been a very important person in my life. 00;30;03;25 - 00;30;28;14 Daisy Hernández And I'm choosing to stay in relationship with her. And it is very difficult, and it is very limited. And we do not talk about politics. And she is not my friend on social media, and I am not her’s. So I have found ways to basically leave this out. However, as I say in the book, we are hopefully not going to see a traditional civil war in the United States. 00;30;28;15 - 00;30;52;12 Daisy Hernández But if we did the kind where you have militias and guns and not a united country, I would not expect any of my cousins, even the one that I'm very close to, I would not expect her to take me in. And I, of course, would. But I also would never expect her to want to live in on the side of a civil war that I picked. 00;30;52;14 - 00;31;17;11 Daisy Hernández Right? She would want to live on the other side. So. So these are just really painful, painful conversations that so many of us are having and negotiating. My big, my big, you know, I guess takeaway is you are not alone. You're not the only one who's trying to figure it out. And there's no right or wrong way. I've had people come up to me after book talks and tell me, “I can no longer speak to certain family members. 00;31;17;11 - 00;31;29;08 Daisy Hernández I've made the decision to walk away from these relationships,” and I say, “Good for you. That was the right decision for you.” It doesn't mean it'll be the right decision for me or for the next person. But these are hard, hard decisions. 00;31;29;11 - 00;31;54;01 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: Yeah. I mean, there's people that are, in our lives at times, that are very important to us. And so those would be people that we have to weigh, is this moral difference, can it be overcome by the depth of our relationship? And are we just going to be able to like, look, look past that? And just each of us has to ask that question on individual basis with the people we have the relationship with, I guess. 00;31;54;02 - 00;32;01;25 Daisy Hernández Hernández: It's how- yeah, it's, it's amazing how it's happening very individually and then also happening quite collectively at the same time. 00;32;01;26 - 00;32;21;22 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know people that have gotten divorce, families that don't talk to each other anymore. I mean, it has become, you know, and it's talked about as a political divide, but I think it's interesting that how you frame it as, like, a moral divide when you ask those, like, harder questions. So I appreciate that. [Downtempo Latin electronic dance music] 00;32;21;25 - 00;32;48;19 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: So you obviously just aren't writing about, you know, your life and what's happening around you. You're getting engaged in it still to this day. And so in Chicago, you volunteered as an interpreter for a community organization that helped people navigate their journey to citizenship. What was that experience like? And do you have any suggestions for others who might be moved to help folks on this journey? 00;32;48;22 - 00;33;15;20 Daisy Hernández Hernández: Yes, absolutely. First, I would say if you have the time and the energy and the Corazón - the heart - absolutely throw yourself into- There are so- basically everywhere you go, there are so many volunteer organizations working with immigrant families in so many different capacities. Everything from, like, the food pantry, to English as a second language lessons conversation, to preparing for citizenship test. 00;33;15;22 - 00;33;47;04 Daisy Hernández I mean, just the, the, the immigrant organizations around this country are stepping up and doing so much on such a tiny shoestring budget. So I definitely encourage people to, to look around and get involved. It's a wonderful way to also step outside of your own social circle, and there's no substitute for working directly with people or volunteering directly with people and, and not, not doing it as a hey, I have a lot to give and so I'm going to go give. 00;33;47;05 - 00;34;05;29 Daisy Hernández But more from a perspective of you are part of my community. Maybe you don't live on the same block that I do. Maybe you're across town, but like, this is my town, this is my state, this is my whatever, my region. And so your well-being is as important to me as that of my own and my family members’. 00;34;05;29 - 00;34;31;04 Daisy Hernández And yes, I volunteered. There was a call for interpreters here in Chicago. There was an organization that was basically covering the cost for people who had legal residency to now go to the next step and do their citizenship test. And there are fees that are involved with doing that. And there also will be a lot of legal questions that are so specific to everyone's case. 00;34;31;04 - 00;34;56;12 Daisy Hernández And so, so I was teamed up with a lawyer. She knew the law, and I knew enough conversational Spanish to get us through. And, you know, basically it was, it was amazing who showed up- For me, it was amazing who showed up because basically everyone who showed up was a version of my mother. These were all women who were now in their 70s and there abouts, and who had been in the country for decades. 00;34;56;14 - 00;35;16;10 Daisy Hernández One woman was almost a carbon copy of my mother; the way she was dressed, just her face, her, her mannerisms. And she and her husband had been in the country for over 30 years. They owned their home in the neighborhood. They had raised, I think, three children who are now, you know, all grown and, and were getting married and had finished college and all of that. 00;35;16;11 - 00;35;36;22 Daisy Hernández And, and it was interesting to hear why they were now in a position where they wanted to move from a green card to citizenship. And I did think that it was going to be a reaction to the backlash that we're having right now against immigrant families. And, and it wasn't, or they, or they did not share that with me. 00;35;36;22 - 00;35;58;08 Daisy Hernández What they shared was that they were now older and so were their family members back in Mexico or Central America, etc.. And so they did not want to be treated like a foreigner every time they needed to come back into the country and have issue- you know, just have to think about their green card and, and their papeles, their documents. 00;35;58;08 - 00;36;18;03 Daisy Hernández They wanted the ease that, that having citizenship and a US passport would give them so that if they needed to drop everything and go visit their 90 year old mother in Mexico or their 86 year old sister, and they could be there for months and not have to think about it and not have to worry about what it meant for their green card, that they could do that. 00;36;18;03 - 00;36;37;20 Daisy Hernández They wanted these. So, so I was really struck by how often it was about caretaking their loved ones in another country. And then there were also women who- and by and large, it was women that day that I talked to, or like the women who brought their husbands but were speaking on behalf of their husband because they were chattier. 00;36;37;22 - 00;36;59;27 Daisy Hernández But the, so the other, the other reason they were now stepping up is that- and I don't actually know the, the specifics about it, but apparently once you reach a certain age, you can take the citizenship test in your language, in your native language. And so there was a woman there who she had tried to take it in English before, but she had failed. 00;37;00;06 - 00;37;19;18 Daisy Hernández And she was telling me the question, some of the questions that she thought she had failed on, and, and I couldn't actually help her exactly. Because the questions are programed in a certain way. So like, “What did,” you know, “Why were the Sov- Why was the United States in battle with the Soviet Union?” You know, I had a very complex answer, [laughter] but the answer is just communism. 00;37;19;21 - 00;37;21;29 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: It's like multiple choice. Yeah. 00;37;21;29 - 00;37;46;15 Daisy Hernández Hernández: So it's, yeah. So, so she had tried to take it in English, and now she was going to be able to take it in Spanish. And so that, that was very moving to me, just in the sense that what- learning that what had kept them from citizenship in a formal way was simply not being able to talk about the United States in their own language, even though they were conversationally fluent in English. 00;37;46;15 - 00;37;50;29 Daisy Hernández It wasn't to the degree that they were able to answer all the questions correctly. 00;37;51;03 - 00;38;16;26 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: Yeah, yeah, I have a friend that lives in Minneapolis, and his, his community is, like, I think, like, a mile or a couple of blocks away from both of the murders that happened there. Alex Pretti and Renée Good. And he talks about just being there for his neighbors, regardless of where their families came from. You know, it's like it's our neighborhood. 00;38;16;26 - 00;38;41;10 Kelsey Timmerman And we, like, we have our kids in school together. And they organized, like, they'd walk the kids to school. And, you know, some people wouldn't want to go out so they would deliver them food. And just like this network of, kind of what you're speaking about, just being a neighbor for people that are in community, in your community with you, like, we should look after folks who are in proximity to us. 00;38;41;11 - 00;38;51;13 Kelsey Timmerman And I found that to be really inspiring, and I hated that he, they had- community had to go to those lengths to help support folks. 00;38;51;14 - 00;39;15;13 Daisy Hernández Hernández: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Here, just not that far from where I live, a group of us went to, it was like a theater, and we were having, I think, it was middle school kids that were going to be dropped off for this, like, end of the year performance, and their families wanted to come. And so we went there to basically scout around the surrounding area in case Border Patrol or ICE agents showed up. 00;39;15;13 - 00;39;35;23 Daisy Hernández And, you know, it was- I was struck that day by how, how small of an action it was on our part, you know, to just show up with our whistles and be ready to go. And having like, it was just such a small thing to ensure that parents coming to, coming to the event with their kids felt a little bit safer that day. 00;39;35;23 - 00;39;38;23 Daisy Hernández It's amazing what we can do for one another. 00;39;38;25 - 00;40;02;09 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: So you mentioned your, your mom and kind of like her journey and your journey. I mean, very early on, one of your earliest jobs’ responsibilities was translating for your family. So you kind of came full circle in that regard. But you begin the book with your mother at the US Embassy in Toronto, I believe, or she had received her green card 40 years before. 00;40;02;09 - 00;40;20;17 Kelsey Timmerman So you all went back there, and then you end the book with your mother at the Colombian embassy in Miami. So kind of, please share, kind of, the context of both the situations and, and kind of, the choices that had led you to, to go to Miami, to the embassy there. 00;40;20;19 - 00;40;30;15 Daisy Hernández Hernández: Yeah. So, so the beginning of my life journey, [laughs] I had to go to Canada. So at the beginning of my journey or my mother's journey, I guess, which is also my 00;40;30;15 - 00;40;49;11 Daisy Hernández journey, she was being petitioned by my father, who he had access to U.S. citizenship because he came from Cuba. So I knew this at a really young age. It was a very strange fact to know at a young age that people who came from Cuba had a pathway to citizenship, but no one else. [Laughs] 00;40;49;14 - 00;41;20;09 Daisy Hernández And that's because the United States wanted to keep Cuba, Cubans specifically, who arrived in the United States, wanted to keep them here, wanted to support them in their battle against the Soviet Union at that point in time. And so they passed legislation in 1966, really early, that went on for decades in, in various ways. So as long as basically a Cuban arrived here in the US, they had access to, to a green card and a pathway to citizenship. That is no longer the case. 00;41;20;09 - 00;41;38;15 Daisy Hernández So that has changed very dramatically. But for many decades that was the case. So my father, who had no intentions of becoming a citizen, became a citizen so that he could petition for my mother. And she had to be at the consulate, at the US consulate in Toronto to basically be outside the borders of the US, to be petitioned as the fiancée. 00;41;38;20 - 00;41;44;10 Daisy Hernández And she was already pregnant with me. So off we went together with my dad. [Laughs] 00;41;44;13 - 00;41;59;16 Daisy Hernández And so I grew up hearing what I thought at the time, when you're a little kid, you think that's a really annoying story because my mother would always say, “You have been to Canada, you were in my belly when you went to,” you know, things like that. And I was like, “No, I didn't. I've never been to Canada,” so. 00;41;59;18 - 00;42;25;09 Daisy Hernández So we grew up like that. And then working on this book really made me think a lot about dual citizenship. Part of what I learned is that that is a phenomena of the 21st century, that if you look back at the 1990s, very few countries would honor dual citizenship. They literally expected you to choose, that if you became- For example, when my mother became a citizen of the United States, she automatically lost her citizenship to Colombia. 00;42;25;10 - 00;42;57;09 Daisy Hernández And that began to change in the 21st century, thanks to phone calls that made it easier to be in connection; flights that became cheaper; simply the way that the numbers of people who were coming to the US but still wanting to keep ties in their home country. And then they were like, “You know what? I still have my, my, my little apartment in Bogota, and I would still like to be able to vote in the local elections there and in the federal elections there,” and things like that. 00;42;57;09 - 00;43;28;22 Daisy Hernández So you had immigrants that were petitioning their leaders to allow for dual citizenship. So now it's, it's a, it's a number like 80% of countries of Western Europe and the US and, you know, other countries recognize dual citizenship. So now we have people who have lots of citizenships in different countries. So I actually decided to pursue Colombian citizenship for many reasons, including that I was realizing that I only had my birthright citizenship. 00;43;28;22 - 00;43;53;14 Daisy Hernández And that is, like, such a particular relationship to a country, because there's a certain level of entitlement that, that I felt, you know, that could not be taken away from me. I was born here. I was raised here. I know this place inside and out. I know the culture inside and out. But I, I knew Colombia through all of the stories of my mother and my aunties that I grew up with here. 00;43;53;14 - 00;44;17;26 Daisy Hernández And obviously I had visited the country as a child, as an adult, but I was, I was so curious about what it would be like to go into that consulate in Miami, or it ended up being the consulate in Chicago, actually, in the end. I started in Miami and then ended up in Chicago. But what it would be like to go in and basically say, “I want to be one of you as well.” [Laughs] 00;44;17;29 - 00;44;42;09 Daisy Hernández And that's when I realized how much we learn about citizenship through popular culture, because I realized that I did not know the Constitution of Colombia the way that I knew the Constitution of the US. And a lot of it was not just social studies classes and K through 12; it was the references in movies and TV shows and songs, in social media references. 00;44;42;10 - 00;45;09;16 Daisy Hernández Right? Like, you know, people in the US, we know a lot about the Second Amendment. [laughs] And we don't know it because we sit around studying the Second Amendment in school; we know because of all the conversations around the Second Amendment that we have and the references in films and in shows. And so, it just gave me this whole other appreciation for what it means, like, what it means to be a citizen of a country. 00;45;09;16 - 00;45;41;29 Daisy Hernández And also, by the way, the Colombian constitution is pretty awesome. [Laughs] It recognizes a lot of rights that we don't recognize in the US. It was revised in the 1990s. So it's a much more modern constitution. And there a wonderful book by the New Yorker writer whose name I'm forgetting right now. But one of the things that she talks about in her- The whole book is about the amendments to the United States Constitution and the fact that it is almost impossible now to amend our Constitution. 00;45;41;29 - 00;46;09;10 Daisy Hernández And she argues that's part of the reason that we've ended up in this political moment, is that we literally cannot change the Constitution to suit the political moment that we're in. But Colombia could, and they did. And so they have- they are considered to be, like, the most progressive country in the Western Hemisphere on abortion after Canada, because they- the Constitution says that you actually have a right to health care, that it is a right. 00;46;09;10 - 00;46;30;23 Daisy Hernández And so you have advocates who use that to fight for access to abortion in Colombia. And there are many other wonderful things about the Constitution. The country still has many problems, because every country has many problems. But it was- it's been a very interesting journey. And, and this is where I tell you that I am now officially a citizen of Colombia. 00;46;30;27 - 00;46;49;26 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: Yeah. How does that how does that feel? Does it feel different in any way? Or like, because I know people that are, you know, whether, regardless who's in control in Washington, D.C., like, people are, like, “I'm going to move,” you know what I mean? “This is not my country. I'm going to move.” And does it feel like you have a bit more- 00;46;49;27 - 00;47;04;15 Kelsey Timmerman And I know people, they're part of the LGBTQ community, who feel like they might have to move just to preserve their marriage, their safety. And so, like, does it feel different? 00;47;04;16 - 00;47;33;01 Daisy Hernández Hernández: Yeah. We definitely- I just want to say we definitely have trans folks who have left the United States and are seeking the safety, and lesbians and gay people, you know, queer people who are leaving the country, definitely for the seeking safety in other countries, for sure. In my case, I pursued citizenship in Colombia, even though I am very, very confident that I will not leave the United States because I believe in fighting for this country. 00;47;33;04 - 00;47;59;18 Daisy Hernández And I have a lot of idealism and a lot of hope in my sister and fellow Americans, so I'm planning to stay. However it did- I did think it was wise. I do think it was wise because I am a writer and I write about politics. I did think it was wise to, to have as much of an escape option as I could. 00;47;59;21 - 00;48;24;14 Daisy Hernández I felt like this is just the tiniest of insurance policies, and I say tiniest, because I don't have any confidence that Columbia wouldn't turn me over if the federal government wanted me to, wanted to extradite me. All of that seems so minor, but actually, the process of getting Colombian citizenship did turn out to be much more emotional than I expected. 00;48;24;18 - 00;48;45;08 Daisy Hernández I will tell you that when we went to the consulate- and so Colombia is one of the very, very few countries in the Western Hemisphere that honors citizenship according to the parents. So if your parents are Colombian citizens, regardless of whether you were born in any other country, they can go to a consulate and say, “I'm here to register the birth of my child.” 00;48;45;13 - 00;49;12;19 Daisy Hernández So it was my mother and me at the consulate in Chicago, along with a bunch of ten year olds [laughs] whose births were- All of our births were being registered officially with the Colombian government. And, and it turned out to be so much more emotional than I expected because, because I grew up not just with my mother, but with a lot of her sisters and with a lot of Colombians, maybe more so than Cubans, actually, in New Jersey. 00;49;12;19 - 00;49;41;09 Daisy Hernández And, and so it felt- and again, this is all just emotional. It just felt like this affirmation of the stories that I had grown up with, the cultural references, obviously the food as well, the songs. But yeah, it just felt like it was this affirmation of how I had been raised by this Colombian family. But it was it was definitely, you know, I was really aware that it was completely emotional. 00;49;41;10 - 00;49;46;29 Daisy Hernández The Colombian government was just like, “Here's your number.” [Laughter] “Here's your passport, here's your government ID.” 00;49;46;29 - 00;49;53;05 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: We don’t care why you're doing it. Had there been an influx of, been an influx of people who were doing this? 00;49;53;06 - 00;50;15;22 Daisy Hernández Hernández: You know, what's interesting with- Yes, there has been across the board, there has been an increase of people, not just with Columbia, but Americans seeking dual citizenship. Yes, there's been- The Guardian did a wonderful story about - I don't remember the rates right now - but yes, [laughs] anyone who can is going, is going out to - I’m being dramatic. But many people are going to consulates seeking out citizenship. 00;50;15;22 - 00;50;36;10 Daisy Hernández And Canada has now, the last time I checked, it was opening its doors. It used to be that you could only claim citizenship, I think, if your parents were citizens, but they have opened it up to, like, grandparents and even further back, actually. And the reason I remember this is because they're being inundated by requests for archival information documents. 00;50;36;10 - 00;51;01;07 Daisy Hernández So if you had a great great grandmother, you want to get her marriage certificate, and Canadian offices will have that kind of information. So, yeah, they are being inundated with requests, like, thousands. But, but I will say that the strange situation with Colombia actually is that people right now are leaving, have been leaving that country in dramatic numbers in recent years. 00;51;01;08 - 00;51;27;25 Daisy Hernández And, and many of them in the, during the Biden administration were coming here to the US. Many of them are going to Spain, including some of my own family members right now in the process of moving to Spain. And there isn't exactly- there isn't clarity about what is causing that flight from Colombia. Everybody says, you know, I mean, Covid was really, you know, just hit Colombia very, very hard. 00;51;27;25 - 00;51;54;04 Daisy Hernández Unemployment was very high. I know that the people, the family members who are going to Spain are just in their early 20s, and they weren't finding opportunities in Colombia that they were able to find in terms of graduate degrees and work in Spain. And Spain itself has passed a law granting a pathway to citizenship or residency for like something like half a million, maybe more, undocumented people in Spain. 00;51;54;04 - 00;52;11;07 Daisy Hernández So Spain is also, you know, is one of these countries that, I think, my understanding is had, like, an older population and is welcoming younger people. So yeah, it's a very, it's a very- I feel like I'm going against the tide here [laughs] by signing up for Colombian citizenship. But, but I'm happy to do so. 00;52;11;08 - 00;52;31;13 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: Yeah. So for having done all this work and just, you know, your life experiences and now the expertise that you've built on that, and you mentioned that you're, like, you want to stay here, and you're, like, full of, of, of, I don't know about full of hope, but you're hopeful for the future. Is this project, like, made that needle tip one way or the other? 00;52;31;13 - 00;52;44;08 Kelsey Timmerman Has this made you more hopeful that, that we can approach citizenship in a way that treats people with, with dignity? Or has it, like, eroded that hope? Or, like, where did you end up landing? 00;52;44;15 - 00;53;11;12 Daisy Hernández Hernández: You know, it's made me appreciate that citizenship has always been tied to issues of race and racism in the US, that as early as 1790, Congress said, we can only, you can only naturalize as an American if you're a free white immigrant, so that the issue of race has been front and center from, you know, just from the beginning when it comes to citizenship. 00;53;11;13 - 00;53;39;28 Daisy Hernández I don't know that I had an awareness of, like, how far back it went. And then, of course, part of it, you know, I write in the book about indigenous children and being sent to these boarding schools, which I think many of us are familiar with. But I didn't know that those boarding schools were being described as places where indigenous children, in addition to cultural genocide, would be subjected to becoming good citizens. 00;53;39;29 - 00;54;15;11 Daisy Hernández That they were seeing the boarding school as these places to teach about U.S. citizenship. And so that's also made me just so much more aware that I've ever have been. How little I know. And we, many of us, we know so little about the indigenous histories and present conditions of, in the United States itself. I was recently talking with an indigenous author who was pointing out that, you know, policing the US Mexico border actually started with policing the borders with indigenous peoples, right? 00;54;15;12 - 00;54;57;25 Daisy Hernández So that, this didn't start in, like, the 1920s when the US began policing that one border. It has an incredible history, right, of, of policing indigenous people. And again, that's also, that's also very racialized as well. So, so in one way- But I wouldn't say that. So- It made me aware, but it did not depress me, Kelsey. [Laughs] This did not depress me because what I've also seen is, historically, the fight and the push, you know, so even with, even with these racist immigration quotas that were put into place in 1924, right away there was like fighting back and advocating against it, right? 00;54;57;26 - 00;55;18;25 Daisy Hernández It took decades for it to be done away with. But it was, you know, and so I see it as, you know, it's a pendulum that we're always moving between justice and injustice. So I feel that I have to stay hopeful. And then, of course, everything that we've seen this past year since Trump came into office has made, has actually, you know, has been cause for despair every single day. 00;55;18;25 - 00;55;40;15 Daisy Hernández The news is a site of despair. But at the same time, what I'm seeing in conversations and on social media is, as you were describing, people standing up for their neighbors, people going out there and walking kids to school, going to the grocery store on behalf of families. I mean, just in big and small ways, still standing up for one another. 00;55;40;15 - 00;55;58;07 Daisy Hernández And I would say even more than that, standing up for what's right, you know, because I do think these are questions of morality and questions of our value systems. And so that makes me really hopeful. So I am planning to be here until, until the bittersweet end. [Laughs] 00;55;58;10 - 00;56;00;15 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: Well, I'm glad you're here and- 00;56;00;19 - 00;56;02;22 Daisy Hernández Hernández: I'm glad you're here, Kelsey. 00;56;02;25 - 00;56;15;09 Kelsey Timmerman Timmerman: And I so appreciate your work. And thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us and helping us see citizenship not just as a status but as a story we're all a part of and connected to. 00;56;15;11 - 00;56;21;07 Daisy Hernández Hernández: Thank you so much for having me. [Theme music] 00;56;21;10 - 00;56;40;16 Kelsey Timmerman Hernández: Thanks again to Daisy Hernández for joining me on today's show. To listen to past episodes of this program, visit IndianaPublicRadio.org/TheFacingProject, or find us on your favorite podcasting app, or on YouTube, or on the NPR network. Or just ask your smart speaker to play The Facing Project on NPR. To continue the conversation about this episode, 00;56;40;18 - 00;57;05;20 Kelsey Timmerman find us on Facebook and Instagram at Facing Project. The Facing Project is recorded at Indiana Public Radio at Ball State University in lovely Muncie, Indiana. The show is produced by J.R. Jamison and the amazing audio engineer extraordinaire, Sean Ashcraft. The show is distributed nationally through PRX. I'm your host, Kelsey Timmerman. Until next time, I wish you the courage to share your own story and the empathy to listen to others. [Theme music]