I could also see that American kids had a hard time understanding that I was American. Kids at school would ask, “What are you?” What am I? “I’m an American,” I would say. They would look at me skeptically. “Come on, what are you?” When you hear questions like that, it makes you feel like you don’t belong, like you have no right to claim American citizenship. I think it’s why refugee kids often develop low expectations for their lives. Even as citizens, they feel like outsiders. “Are you asking where I was born?” I would say. “If so, I was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But now,
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