Tacoma’s Citywide Book Club Is Asking Who Gets to Belong

Citizenship can be a legal designation, a family story, a political argument—or simply the feeling that a place considers you one of its own.

Tacoma Reads will explore all of those meanings when award-winning author Daisy Hernández comes to the University of Washington Tacoma on Thursday, October 1. The free event will place Hernández in conversation with Tacoma Mayor Anders Ibsen and include a reading, audience questions and a book signing.

Hernández’s latest book, Citizenship: Notes on an American Myth, is the adult selection for this year’s citywide reading program. Rather than approaching citizenship strictly through court decisions or immigration policy, Hernández combines memoir, history and cultural criticism to examine how Americans decide who belongs—and who remains outside the circle.

That question is personal for Hernández. Her mother immigrated from Colombia, while her father came to the United States as a political refugee from Cuba. Their experiences provide a starting point for a broader examination of the laws, customs and language that have shaped American citizenship, particularly for immigrants from Latin America.

Hernández brings a journalist’s eye to the subject. She has written for National Geographic, The Atlantic, The New York Times and Slate, and her work has appeared on NPR. She is now an associate professor of English and director of the English Major in Writing at Northwestern University.

Her previous book, The Kissing Bug, explored the overlooked tropical disease that affected members of her own family. It won the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, became an inaugural selection for the National Book Foundation’s Science + Literature program and was named one of Time magazine’s 10 best nonfiction books of 2021.

This year’s Tacoma Reads program extends the citizenship conversation across generations. Teen readers are invited to pick up Diane Guerrero’s My Family Divided, while younger readers and families can explore Rajani LaRocca’s Some of Us. All three books examine immigration, citizenship and belonging from different perspectives.

The selections are available through Tacoma Public Library in print, ebook and audiobook formats. Copies can also be purchased through King’s Books, one of the program’s community partners alongside Tacoma Community House.

The October 1 gathering is intended to be more than a conventional author appearance. With Hernández reading from her work, speaking with the mayor and answering questions from the audience, Tacoma residents will have an opportunity to consider what citizenship means beyond the words printed on a passport.

The free event runs from 6 to 8 p.m. at William W. Philip Hall on the UW Tacoma campus. Advance registration is encouraged through Tacoma Public Library.

Register here.