Abstract:
This thesis is a collection of essays that portray my experiences with becoming changing nationalities, becoming a citizen of America and relinquishing my Indian citizenship. Beginning with the process of applying for citizenship, I examine how the transformation in nationality shaped my thinking and my viewpoints related to what it is to belong to a nation, and how does one express their relationship with a nation. The essays also look at my country of birth and the places where I grew up from a perspective of someone who was changing their citizenship. These essays capture the narrator‘s ambivalence with the citizenship process as well as living life with change in citizenship status – if what holds nations together is imagination, what is the relationship between what is imagined and what is lived?
