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, I am an American.” What I often wanted to say was, “I’m a human being.
