Laguardia Reflection

Grace Perry

Dr. June Ellis 

EN376*01

27th November 

Laguardia Reflection

What I really enjoyed most about Okorafor's Laguardia was the literal use of the word "alien" to depict the ways in which our contemporary society approaches immigration. The travel notices, the banning of people from specific countries (ironically announced after the image of the Statue of Liberty, the pinnacle of freedom for most of the European immigrants coming into New York throughout the 1900's), the blatant racism in profiling travelers, and the inclusion of microaggressions paralleled against human-human interaction and human-alien interaction all contributed to an incredibly poignant commentary of the hypocrisy many Americans maintain towards their own immigrant ancestors. The graphic novel format provided an apt depiction of the degree in which the "aliens" in the novel's reality compare to immigrants within our reality.

I also could not help but chuckle at Future naming her and Citizen's child Future Citizen Lives because of how well it encapsulated the progression of the characters throughout the novel. The future citizen, Future Citizen, will live. The future citizen who happens to be both floral and human, yet he is still a citizen of the future. This is an idea that has not really left me since finishing the novel because of the way it marks a moment of hope and progress, it also is reflective of its own limitations, in that it carries the implication that the future citizen will live in a better world, but not the perfect world. It does not remove any struggle for Future Citizen, but the addition of Lives means that they will be successful to some extent. Given all we have discussed this semester about memory, learning from the past, and the process of dismantling our systems that have thrived off of our erasure of certain histories, Laguardia is self-reflective in saying change will inevitably take time, but it's there and it's happening. 

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