Notes from a Dual Citizen: 1 I’m a dual citizenship evangelist. The other night in The Grey Dog Café sat a table of five young funky New Yorkers eyeing the rest of us sitting around drinking coffee, eating salads, staring into the giant eyes of dogs in the paintings.

“This may sound funny,” one said, approaching the friend I sat with, “but I like your hair, and I need a model.” She proceeded to feel her hair and recruited her as a bob model for the next morning. They were hairstylist apprentices from Arrojo studio. One stylist with thick brown hair and full lips got a call around ten p.m. canceling her model for the next morning. Her table nodded in agreement that I needed a haircut. So, in the morning I ventured to Varick Street and as I sat in her chair soon learned her grandparents were from Campobasso. That’s all I had to hear. I began my Lanzalogue, “I got dual citizenship. You probably can too. It took a year and over three hundred dollars. That was pre nine-eleven. Look at the consulate website. Talk to your father. See if Grandpa left a shoebox of papers.” Then I flash my two passports. There’s an allure in being double documented. And, that’s how my cittadinanza journey began; a friend flashing his maroon passaporto to me like he just landed in the homeland. I don’t know if I’m a decent citizen. I do vote but these days a vote feels more like a purchase to me than a true vote, especially in the U.S.. In this U.S. presidential election year I feel that my vote is a purchase of identity, ideals, products, organizations, and companies that back candidates. I listen to presidential hopefuls say the word America (which incidentally I saw a sticker over a cappuccino machine that said –America – that’s a nice Italian name) anyway, I listen to the phonetics of belief the candidates imbue in the vowels in AHHM errr ika, and I believe I hear where they work on lilt and intonation, Midwest southern U.S. vowels. AHHM Air icka. They work on that. I can hear it. I used to have a nun that worked on that word with me. By the time she was through with me, no one could hear my Bronx accent in the word America. a presto Rachele Coraggio