Short answer

  • Citizenship: notes on an american myth is the title of a 2026 book by Daisy Hernandez, published by Hogarth, that blends memoir, history, and cultural criticism to examine what citizenship means in the United States.
  • In law, United States citizenship is defined mainly by the Fourteenth Amendment, which says that all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.
  • In practice, citizenship works on at least three levels: legal citizenship, a formal status with rights and duties; social citizenship, the everyday experience of being treated as a full member of society; and cultural citizenship, the feeling of being recognized as belonging.
  • A person can hold legal citizenship and still be treated as an outsider. A person can also live, work, pay taxes, and raise children in a community for years without holding legal citizenship. That gap between paper status and lived belonging is the heart of the book's argument.
  • Birth on United States soil, birth to a United States citizen parent, and naturalization are the main legal paths to citizenship, but each path has rules, exceptions, and a history that has changed over time.
  • Naturalization for most lawful permanent residents generally requires being at least 18, holding permanent residence for at least five years, showing continuous residence and physical presence, demonstrating good moral character, and showing basic English and civics knowledge, followed by an oath.
  • United States law does not require a citizen to choose between United States citizenship and another nationality, so dual citizenship is possible in practice, although the other country's laws still matter.
  • The history of citizenship in the United States includes long periods when the law excluded people by race, national origin, or tribal status. Those exclusions were later narrowed or removed, but their effects still shape debates about belonging today.

Introduction

If you typed the exact phrase citizenship: notes on an american myth into a search box, you were probably looking for a book. That is the first fact to get straight, because the phrase is not a general slogan and it is not a government program. It is the title of a book about what citizenship means in the United States, and the book uses one family’s story to ask a larger question: who counts as an American, and who gets to decide?

This article answers that question in two ways. First, it explains what the book is, who wrote it, and what argument it makes, without inventing its contents and without copying its text. Second, it explains the citizenship ideas behind the title, so a reader who has never opened the book still leaves with a clear understanding of the legal rules, the history, and the everyday meaning of belonging. No purchase is recommended here. The book is treated as a starting point for learning, not as something you must buy to understand the topic. A myth, in this sense, is not simply a false story. It is a story a country tells about itself, a story that shapes laws, customs, and everyday judgments about who belongs.

What the Phrase Actually Denotes

Citizenship: Notes on an American Myth is a book by Daisy Hernandez. It was published on February 17, 2026, by Hogarth, with 304 pages and ISBN 9780593730171, according to the publisher’s catalog listing. Hernandez is an associate professor of creative writing at Northwestern University and the author of earlier books including The Kissing Bug and A Cup of Water Under My Bed, according to the same listing. Those bibliographic facts are the safe ground. Everything else about the book in this article is presented as the book’s published framing, as described by its publisher and by reviewers, not as a summary of passages this writer has quoted or reproduced.

The publisher describes the book as a work that braids memoir, history, and cultural criticism, and that turns to the author’s own family stories to examine how the idea of citizenship works as a myth, meaning one of the stories Americans tell themselves about the American soul and psyche. In that framing, the author’s mother arrived from Colombia, while her father was a political refugee from Cuba. The book, on the publisher’s account, uses those family experiences to show how laws, customs, and language include some people and exclude others, especially people who come from Latin America.

Publishers Weekly describes the book as a candid essay collection on the meaning of citizenship in the United States, and says Hernandez argues that citizenship is not a simple legal reality but a changing social construct shaped by people in power. That review also notes themes that run through the book: Cold War policy toward Cuban exiles, low wage work by immigrant women, queer experience and belonging, the growth of dual citizenship, and immigrant support for restrictive policies. A campus newspaper review describes a similar blend: childhood vignettes in an immigrant household set against United States immigration policy, and a distinction between legal and social citizenship.

Two cautions belong here. First, this article does not claim to have read and summarized every chapter of the book, and it does not invent chapter contents, quotations, or conclusions that were not found in the publisher and review sources checked for this article. Readers who want the book’s full argument should consult the book itself through a library or another lawful source. Second, the book is an argument and a memoir, not a legal manual. Its claims about what citizenship feels like are different in kind from the legal rules stated in the Constitution and in federal statutes. The rest of this article therefore separates the book’s framing from the law, and brings the two together only where the connection is clear.

Start with the legal definition, because it is the anchor for everything else. The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1868, provides in Section 1: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” That sentence defines citizenship by birth and by naturalization, ties national citizenship to state citizenship, and adds the qualifying phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” which has generated a long history of legal argument about exactly who is included.

Before 1868, the Constitution as first adopted did not contain a general definition of citizenship. It mentioned citizenship in connection with office holding and other matters, but it did not say in one place who counted as a citizen. That gap mattered. In Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857, the Supreme Court held that Black Americans, whether free or enslaved, were not citizens within the meaning of the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment was adopted after the Civil War in part to reverse that holding and to secure citizenship for formerly enslaved people and their children. The modern definition was therefore not handed down unchanged from the founding. It was fought over, written in response to slavery and civil war, and then interpreted in later cases.

The most important early interpretation came in United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898. Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco to parents from China who were not eligible to become naturalized citizens under the laws of that time. When he returned from a trip abroad, officials denied him entry on the ground that his Chinese parentage made him a subject of China rather than a citizen of the United States. The Supreme Court held that a child born in the United States to parents who were ineligible for naturalization was nevertheless a citizen of the United States. The Constitution Annotated summary from Congress states this holding plainly, and it also notes narrow exceptions, including children born to diplomatic representatives of a foreign state and children born to hostile occupying forces. The case shows both the breadth and the limits of birthright citizenship.

Birthright citizenship is often described with two Latin phrases worth learning. Jus soli means right of soil: citizenship follows the place of birth. Jus sanguinis means right of blood: citizenship follows parentage. United States law uses both. A child born in the United States, subject to United States jurisdiction, is a citizen by jus soli. A child born abroad to a United States citizen parent can also be a citizen at birth, by jus sanguinis, if the parent meets statutory requirements, which include physical presence rules that vary with the facts of the case. Citizenship by birth should also be distinguished from citizenship by naturalization, which is the legal process by which a person who was not a citizen at birth becomes a citizen under a uniform rule set by Congress, ending with an oath.

The history of American citizenship is a history of widening in some directions and narrowing in others. Telling that history honestly means naming the exclusions as well as the expansions, because the book’s title points directly at the gap between the ideal of equal citizenship and the record of who was actually included.

The first federal naturalization law, the Naturalization Act of 1790, limited naturalization to free white persons of good character, with a residence requirement. In 1870, Congress extended naturalization to aliens of African nativity and persons of African descent, reflecting the post Civil War effort to include formerly enslaved people and their descendants. It did not, however, open naturalization to all groups.

Chinese immigrants faced a different and harsher regime. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 provided that no state court or court of the United States should admit Chinese persons to citizenship, and broader exclusion policies restricted Chinese immigration itself. Wong Kim Ark was decided against that background: his parents could not naturalize, yet the Court held that his birth in San Francisco still made him a citizen. The distinction between birthright citizenship and eligibility for naturalization is therefore not an abstract point. It was the exact issue in a case that decided whether a man born in the United States could be treated as a foreigner because of his parents’ origin.

Native American citizenship followed yet another path. The Fourteenth Amendment, as originally understood, did not extend birthright citizenship to members of Native tribes who were considered subject to tribal law rather than fully subject to United States jurisdiction. That gap was closed in general terms by the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. Even then, citizenship in law did not immediately guarantee equal access to voting, because states imposed voting barriers that took further decades to address. Later changes moved the system toward a more uniform structure: the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943, and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 ended the national origins quota system. Those changes moved the formal law closer to the Fourteenth Amendment, but they did not end debate about immigration or belonging.

This history helps explain why a book can call citizenship a myth without denying that citizenship is also a real legal status. The legal status has changed its meaning, its reach, and its exclusions over time. When the word stays the same but the rules change, it is natural to ask what the word really means, and whose story it is telling at any given moment.

Social Citizenship: Belonging Beyond the Paper Status

Legal citizenship answers one question: does the law recognize you as a citizen? Social citizenship answers a different question: are you treated, in everyday life, as a full member of society? The distinction comes from the British sociologist T. H. Marshall, whose account of social citizenship is discussed in coverage of Hernandez’s book. In Marshall’s account, social citizenship includes the right to a basic level of economic welfare and security, the right to share fully in the social heritage of a society, and the right to live the life of a civilized being according to the standards prevailing in that society. A campus review of the book gives a concrete example of the gap: a public health department might vaccinate children for free, while an immigrant mother must pay for basic pediatric care in cash. The lived access is not equal, even when the legal status on paper is the same or similar.

Social citizenship is useful because it names experiences that legal definitions miss. A naturalized citizen who speaks English with an accent may be asked, repeatedly, where she is really from, in a way that a native born citizen is not. A United States citizen child of undocumented parents may grow up fearing that a clinic or a government office could expose the family, even though the child’s own status is secure in law. A person who has lived in the United States for decades, worked, and raised a family, but who lacks legal status, may be deeply embedded in a community and yet be unable to vote or to seek help without fear.

Cultural citizenship is a related idea: where social citizenship is about access to welfare, security, and shared social goods, cultural citizenship is about recognition, whether your language, food, faith, and history are treated as part of the national story or as something foreign to it. Hernandez’s book, on the publisher’s account, asks how language itself includes and excludes, since words such as alien and illegal do legal and political work by sorting people into those who belong and those who threaten belonging. None of this means that legal citizenship does not matter. It carries the right to vote in federal elections, the right to a United States passport, and protection from deportation. The point of the distinction is to explain why two people with the same legal status can have very different experiences of belonging.

The Naturalization Process in Plain Terms

Naturalization is best understood as a sequence of eligibility checks, an application, an interview and test, and an oath. This section is general information, not legal advice. Anyone with a complex history, including prior immigration violations, criminal matters, long absences from the United States, or questions about a child’s status, should seek advice from a qualified immigration attorney or an accredited representative before filing anything.

The most common path begins with lawful permanent residence, often called holding a green card. For most applicants, the general eligibility requirements published by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, known as USCIS, include being at least 18 years old when filing Form N-400, Application for Naturalization; having been a lawful permanent resident for at least five years; showing continuous residence in the United States for at least five years immediately before filing; showing physical presence in the United States for at least 30 months out of those five years; living for at least three months in the state or USCIS district where the application is filed; demonstrating good moral character for the required period; demonstrating attachment to the principles and ideals of the United States Constitution; being able to read, write, and speak basic English; and having knowledge of the fundamentals of United States history and government, commonly called civics. Spouses of United States citizens who live in marital union with the citizen spouse may qualify under a three year rule instead of the five year rule. Members of the military may qualify under separate provisions.

Continuous residence and physical presence sound similar, but they are different tests. Continuous residence asks whether the United States has remained your main home, without a break that suggests you abandoned residence. A trip abroad of more than 180 days can raise a question about continuous residence. Physical presence counts the actual days you were physically in the United States. Keeping travel and tax records is therefore practical preparation, because those records are how residence is shown, not just claimed.

The English and civics requirements are tested at the interview. USCIS publishes study materials, including a list of civics questions, through its Citizenship Resource Center. For applications filed on or after October 20, 2025, USCIS has stated that it administers a 2025 naturalization civics test, in which the officer asks up to 20 questions from a list of 128, and the applicant must answer 12 correctly to pass. Older applicants may qualify for exemptions, and applicants with certain medical disabilities may seek a waiver through Form N-648. Because test versions change, applicants should confirm the current test on the USCIS website at the time they file. If approved, the final step is the Oath of Allegiance, usually at a naturalization ceremony, after which USCIS issues a Certificate of Naturalization.

Dual Citizenship and the Question of Loyalty

Dual citizenship is one of the most misunderstood parts of this topic, and it is also one of the themes noted in coverage of Hernandez’s book, which discusses the rise of dual citizenship in the twenty first century. The short answer is that United States law does not require a citizen to choose between United States citizenship and another nationality. The Department of State states that United States law does not require a United States citizen to choose between United States citizenship and another nationality, and that a citizen may naturalize in a foreign state without risk to United States citizenship, as set out in the Department’s dual nationality guidance.

That does not mean dual citizenship is simple, or that it is encouraged as a matter of policy. The Department of State also notes that dual nationals owe allegiance to both countries, must obey the laws of both, and may face conflicting obligations, including military service and taxation. In practice, each country decides for itself who its citizens are, so a person can be a dual citizen in fact because two legal systems each claim the person.

The Supreme Court’s role in this area is also worth stating carefully. In Afroyim v. Rusk in 1967, the Court held that Congress could not strip a person of citizenship without that person’s voluntary relinquishment. In Vance v. Terrazas in 1980, the Court refined the rule, holding that the government must prove not only an act that might suggest giving up citizenship, but also the intent to relinquish it. Together, those decisions mean that acquiring a second nationality, voting in a foreign election, or serving in a foreign military does not by itself automatically end United States citizenship. Intent matters.

The loyalty question behind dual citizenship is older than the legal rule. The modern position is more practical: loyalty is shown by obeying the law, paying taxes, serving on a jury when called, voting, and participating in civic life, not by holding only one passport. A dual citizen who lives abroad may still face practical questions, such as which passport to use at which border and which tax system applies. Dual citizenship is therefore best understood as a legal fact with practical consequences, not as a test of feeling.

Myths, Stories, and Who Gets to Belong

The word myth in the book’s title does a lot of work, because readers sometimes hear myth and think only of falsehood. A myth can be false, as in the claim that citizenship has always meant the same thing. A myth can also be a founding story, as in the image of the United States as a nation of immigrants, or as a refuge for the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, to use the famous lines from Emma Lazarus inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. That image is powerful, but it has never described every arrival equally: some were welcomed as settlers, some were brought by force as enslaved people, some were recruited as labor and then excluded by law, and some were treated as refugees in one era and as a problem in another.

One recurring myth is that citizenship is a simple reward for good behavior, granted to those who follow the rules and withheld from those who do not. The history in this article complicates that story. People have followed every rule available to them and still been excluded because the rules themselves excluded their group. People have been granted citizenship in one era because their arrival served a political purpose, as Publishers Weekly notes for Cuban exiles during the Cold War, and treated as a burden in another era when the political story changed. A person’s citizenship status is therefore not a reliable measure of that person’s character, effort, or contribution.

Another recurring myth is that immigrants either assimilate fully or fail to belong. In reality, belonging is usually partial, layered, and negotiated over generations. A first generation immigrant may speak limited English and still raise children who are fluent in English, vote in every election, and serve in public office. A queer daughter of immigrants, as Hernandez is described in review coverage, may experience belonging differently again, because ideas of family, nation, and respectability have historically excluded queer people even when their legal citizenship was never in doubt.

A third myth is that citizenship debates are only about the border, or only about people who arrived recently. In fact, citizenship debates are also about people who were born in the United States, about Native Americans whose ancestors were here before the United States existed, about children born abroad to American parents, and about Americans who live abroad. The book’s focus on Latin American experience is one entry point into that larger debate, not the whole of it.

FAQ

What is Citizenship: Notes on an American Myth? Citizenship: notes on an american myth is a book by Daisy Hernandez, published by Hogarth on February 17, 2026, that blends memoir, history, and cultural criticism to examine what citizenship means in the United States, especially through a family with roots in Colombia and Cuba.

Who wrote Citizenship: Notes on an American Myth? Daisy Hernandez wrote the book. According to the publisher, she is an associate professor of creative writing at Northwestern University and the author of The Kissing Bug and A Cup of Water Under My Bed.

Is Citizenship: Notes on an American Myth fiction or nonfiction? It is nonfiction. It is described by its publisher as braiding memoir, history, and cultural criticism, and by Publishers Weekly as a candid essay collection on the meaning of citizenship in the United States.

What does American citizenship mean in law? In law, American citizenship means the formal status defined by the Fourteenth Amendment for persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction, with the rights and duties that status carries, including voting in federal elections and holding a United States passport.

What is birthright citizenship? Birthright citizenship is citizenship acquired by birth in the United States, subject to United States jurisdiction, under the Fourteenth Amendment, as confirmed for children born to parents ineligible for naturalization in United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898.

How does naturalization work? Naturalization is the process by which a lawful permanent resident who meets age, residence, presence, character, English, and civics requirements, files Form N-400, passes an interview and test, and takes the Oath of Allegiance, becomes a United States citizen. The most common path requires five years of permanent residence, or three years for certain spouses of United States citizens.

Can a United States citizen also hold another citizenship? Yes, in practice. United States law does not require a citizen to choose between United States citizenship and another nationality, under Department of State guidance. The other country’s laws, and practical duties such as taxation and military service, still apply and should be checked separately.

What is social citizenship? Social citizenship is the everyday experience of being treated as a full member of society, with access to economic security, shared social goods, and respect, as described by the sociologist T. H. Marshall. A person can hold legal citizenship and still lack full social citizenship if services or recognition are unevenly available.

Why is citizenship called a myth in the book’s title? The title uses myth to mean a story a country tells about itself, not only a falsehood. The book argues, on the publisher’s and reviewers’ account, that the story of who belongs in the United States has changed over time and has included some groups while excluding others, even when the legal word citizenship stayed the same.

Where can I learn the current naturalization rules? Check the USCIS Citizenship Resource Center and the Form N-400 pages on the USCIS website at the time you plan to file, because test versions, fees, and procedures change. This article gives general information only and is not legal advice.

Sources & references

  • Penguin Random House, Citizenship by Daisy Hernandez, publisher catalog listing, for the book title, author, publisher Hogarth, publication date February 17, 2026, page count 304, ISBN 9780593730171, author background, and publisher description of the book as braiding memoir, history, and cultural criticism. This page was opened and read in this writer pass.
  • Publishers Weekly, Citizenship: Notes on an American Myth, review dated April 27, 2026, for the description of the book as a candid essay collection on the meaning of citizenship, the argument that citizenship is a changing social construct shaped by people in power, and the themes of Cold War policy toward Cuban exiles, low wage textile work, queer experience, dual citizenship, and immigrant support for restrictive policies. This review was found in search results and its text was read in this writer pass.
  • University of Colorado Boulder, Center for Humanities and the Arts, Fall 2026 Book page, for confirmation that Citizenship: Notes on an American Myth by Daisy Hernandez was chosen as the Fall 2026 book and for the publisher description of the family background. This page was opened and read in this writer pass.
  • The Tufts Daily, Citizenship: Notes on an American Myth intertwines personal, national history, for the account of the book as braiding childhood vignettes in an immigrant household with United States immigration policy, the author's account of feeling American but not exactly a citizen, and the discussion of T. H. Marshall and social citizenship. This article was found in search results and its text was read in this writer pass.
  • Library of Congress, Constitution Annotated, Citizenship Clause Doctrine, for the text of Fourteenth Amendment Section 1, the holding in United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898, and the narrow exceptions for children of diplomats and hostile occupying forces. This page was opened and read in this writer pass.
  • Organization of American Historians, From Wong Kim Ark to the Japanese American Incarceration, and Supreme Court Historical Society, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, for the background of the 1790 naturalization limit to free white persons, the 1870 extension to persons of African descent, and the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act context. These pages were found in search results and their text was read in this writer pass.
  • Asian American Education Project, Wong Kim Ark and Birthright Citizenship lesson page, for the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 and the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943. This page was found in search results and its text was read in this writer pass.
  • United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, I am a Lawful Permanent Resident of 5 Years, and Commonly Asked Questions About the Naturalization Process, for the general naturalization eligibility requirements, the five year and three year paths, continuous residence and physical presence, English and civics, and the 2025 civics test format for applications filed on or after October 20, 2025. These pages were found in search results and their text was read in this writer pass.
  • United States Department of State, Dual Nationality guidance, opened and read in the QA pass, for the position that United States law does not require a citizen to choose between United States citizenship and another nationality, that a citizen may naturalize in a foreign state without risk to United States citizenship, and that dual nationals owe allegiance to both countries and may face conflicting obligations.

Emma Hudson

Editor of Amberaisle — clear, thoughtful explainers for curious readers. More about the editor →