The details of their individual situations bear little resemblance to each other - my mother’s family arrived from Cuba in the mid-1960s, Vuong’s family came from Vietnam 30 years later - but they share a similar legacy of exile. Like my mom, the poet Ocean Vuong came to this country as a child. It’s easy to imagine the threat of denaturalization and expulsion fostering a culture of uncertainty for an exile community already living in the tenuous condition of the uprooted and displaced. Although rare, naturalized citizens like my mom can have their citizenship revoked under certain extreme circumstances. As a Cuban immigrant, the condition of her life in this country has always come with an asterisk. This is not to say that my mom’s fears are baseless. Trying to find the catalyst for this particular anxious iteration was as futile as attempting to determine what, precisely, precipitated a volcanic eruption or an earthquake. Fear was simply the organizing principle of my mom’s worldview. As we walked the aisles of Home Depot, searching for door guards and deadbolts, it occurred to me that I was missing the point: there was no specific concern. Certainly nothing that would prompt my mom to change her locks for the first time in 13 years. A certain level of suspicion comes with living in south Florida, but I saw no evidence of increased crime in my hometown.

Citing recent security concerns, my mom was determined to change the locks on her front door. I’d been back home for five hours and we’d already been to Home Depot twice.

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