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Phillip's new US citizenship status is the celebratory focus of this episode of TAPIT. It's a celebration 30 years in the making, and it ends in a custom poem worthy of an inauguration. Join us on the journey of a lifetime, as Phillip overcomes rage, discovers love, changes careers, adopts a new name, and learns to see the beauty in his own immigration story.  Host Todd Boss traces Phillip's path of self-authorship from Vegas to Baja to Mexico City to Texas to Hollywood, and back to Vegas, in a tale filled with setbacks and surprises... then taps President Barack Obama's 2009 inaugural poet Richard Blanco to guest write an extraordinary poem of rejoicing and recognition, that elicits a tear for every step along the way. 

Chapters in this episode: 

1. What's in a name?
2. How a place makes (and unmakes and remakes) a person
3. Phillip finds himself in fiction and film
4. The intricacies of immigration and the Texas/Mexico divide
5. Learning and loving in Las Vegas
6. Carving a path to citizenship and the truth about timing
7. Taking the law into his own hands
8. Bringing in Blanco
9. The poem, Your Name :: My Name
10. A wordless reaction says it all

This episode is dedicated to Phillip's mother, Olivia de Lourdes Meneses Moguel, and to mothers everywhere who read to their children.

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Do you think there's a poem in your story? Leave Todd a voicemail on our Haiku, Hawaii, listener line: 808-300-0449.

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