Queer in a legal sense: Negation and negotiation of citizenship in Boutilier v. Immigration and Naturalization Service and Arturo Islas’s The Rain GodQueer en sentido legal: Negación y negociación de la ciudadanía en Boutilier v. Immigration and Naturalization Service y The Rain God de Arturo Islas

This essay brings together the US Supreme Court’s Boutilier v. INS decision and Arturo Islas’s The Rain God to analyze the negation of homosexual and queer experience in the legal negotiation of access to citizenship. The article brings together methodological frameworks from literary, legal, queer, and Latina/o/x studies to argue that citizenship requires a narrative presence, one that immigration policy and its judicial interpretation has, until recently, refused to homosexual migrants. In analyzing The Rain God’s depiction of Felix as a legal intermediary between migrant laborers and US citizenship alongside standing immigration policy insistent on homosexual exclusion, this article demonstrates how homosexuality is leveraged not only against queer people, but also against their immediately surrounding communities to negate queer presence in US legal and cultural contexts.