The Land of the Free Won’t Leave Me Alone

Paris

If you were born in America, you probably consider it a blessing. I don’t. I was born in California to a French father and an American mother. Under U.S. law, that makes me a citizen. My parents divorced when I was 18 months old, and my father brought me home to grow up in France. Since then I’ve been to the U.S. once. When I was 26, I visited my mother for the first and only time. She spoke no French. I spoke no English, and I still don’t. (This essay has been translated for me.)