The Illegal

Race is central to this novel. Defining Blackness is the critical tenet of Freedom State’s history. Whiteness comes with automatic citizenship and power in this country. Blackness grants second-class citizenship at best and deportation and death at worst. The stark power differential informs even the most banal aspects of existence, such as the characters’ running habits. Keita must win races not because it is fun but because it could save his life. Calder wants to run well because “he had bet five friends that in this, his first marathon, he could beat 3:15. Riding on the bet: a 750-millilitre bottle of eighteen-year-old, single-malt Macallan scotch worth two hundred and fifty dollars” (128). The contrast between what is at stake for Keita and Calder drips with satire, and this hyperbolic example demonstrates the difference between Black and white identity in Freedom State.

The irony is that while race’s consequences are undoubtedly real, race itself is revealed to be a social construct, as evidenced by the fact that characters like John and Prime Minister Wellington spend so much time trying to define and prove their racial identity. Wellington “passes” for white and therefore rises to power, yet the very fact that he is able to do so reveals how malleable ideas of race are.