The weight of shadows

the long version

Jose Orduna chronicles the process of becoming a North American citizen in a post-9/11 United States. Intractable realities - rooted in the continuity of US imperialism to globalism - form the landscape of Orduna's daily experience, where the geopolitical meets the quotidian. Orduna describes the absurd feeling of being handed a piece of paper, his naturalization certificate, that guarantees something he has always known: he has every right to be here. A trenchant exploration of race, class, and identity, The Weight of Shadows is a searing meditation on the nature of political, linguistic, and cultural borders, and the meaning of "America."