How Beyoncé's 'Cowboy Carter' shaped my patriotism as a new American citizen | Opinion
'Cowboy Carter' reassured me that it is normal to have a complicated and, sometimes, painful relationship with a country that falls short of its promises.
In April 2024, I sat across from a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officer in a cream blazer, answering questions I had memorized from middle school civics. A few days earlier, I had stayed up past midnight listening to Beyoncé’s "Cowboy Carter." I didn’t know it yet, but her album would help me process what it meant to finally become an American.
I have called this country my home since I was 6. After 22 years of living here, paying taxes and spending thousands of dollars navigating the immigration system, I was now getting the chance to become a U.S. citizen on paper.
For most of my life, America called me a “resident alien.” But I was human. A poet. A critical thinker. A proud member of the Beyhive.
When "Cowboy Carter" dropped, I lay next to my sleeping wife and listened to the opening track, “Ameriican Requiem." Instant tears welled up in my eyes as the layered vocals, the buzzy sitar and the unflinching lyrics poured through my headphones. "Used to say I spoke too country / And the rejection came, said I wasn't country 'nough ..." Beyoncé croons as the song soars.
Within the first few minutes of the album, Beyoncé spoke to something I had been carrying with me since I submitted my $710 citizenship application. As a queer South Asian woman navigating America's institutions – from the Transportation Security Administration to college financial aid offices – I knew what it meant to be told, implicitly and explicitly, that I didn’t quite belong.
As an immigrant, 'Cowboy Carter' shaped how I saw being American
Over 27 tracks – coincidentally, the same number as the constitutional amendments I memorized for the civics exam – Beyoncé reclaimed a genre and, in doing so, made space for the rest of us who’ve been shut out of America’s story. Songs like “Ya Ya” and “Alliigator Tears” problematized blind patriotism and laid bare the gap between America’s ideals and its actions.
To me, that gap never felt wider than it did in 2024.
As I prepared for my naturalization interview, I watched my alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin, call in state troopers to suppress peaceful student protests against what human rights activists are calling Israel's genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Earlier that year, the same university had dismantled its diversity, equity and inclusion infrastructure in response to Senate Bill 17, causing many of my mentors and friends to lose their jobs.
On social media, I saw images of children pulled from rubble. At airports, I continued to be “randomly” selected for additional security screenings. A TSA agent once asked if I spoke English while I was speaking English to my wife. These weren’t isolated moments; they were reminders that I was always going to be seen as someone on the outskirts of belonging.
Even when I excelled, I paid a price. While a UT student, I had to return part of my merit-based scholarships because I was a “nonresident alien.” Many other scholarships were off-limits to me entirely. And still, I was expected to be grateful – grateful to have a shot at the "American dream."
Beyoncé's work of critical patriotism will long outlive her tour
But I didn’t feel grateful. I felt angry. And "Cowboy Carter" validated that anger. Through songs like “Blackbiird” and “Ya Ya,” Beyoncé demanded a reckoning. She sang what I struggled to put into words: Loving this country didn’t mean ignoring its failures. It meant insisting that it live up to the promises it made.
James Baldwin once wrote, “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
"Cowboy Carter" serves as an act of critical patriotism, born not from cynicism but from care.
The album doesn’t come from a place of hate – far from it. This body of work is a practice in radical honesty rooted in love. One can hear this in its final track, “Amen," as Beyoncé ends the album’s journey with an invitation for us all to “purify our Fathers’ sins.”
As the "Cowboy Carter" tour came to a close July 26, I’ve realized how much this one country album shaped my understanding of what it means to be American. Seeing Beyoncé open her show with "Ameriican Requiem" live – more than a year after the album dropped – overwhelmed me with the same stinging tears, goosebumps and rare sense of belonging as when I first heard it.
"Cowboy Carter" reassured me that it is normal to have a complicated and, sometimes, painful relationship with a country that falls short of its promises. However, we can assert our role in shaping America’s culture. Like Beyoncé, I don’t need to wait for permission to belong. I can assert my agency now.
A few months after my citizenship interview, when it finally came time for me to place my hand over my heart to take the Oath of Allegiance, I did so with both pride and purpose. After so long feeling like an outsider looking in, "Cowboy Carter" showed me that my belonging here isn’t about assimilation or upholding the status quo at all. It’s about building an America where everyone – not just those who fit a narrow mold – can be free, safe and seen.
To me, that’s what being American is about.
Ena Ganguly was born in Bihar, India, and raised in Texas. Their work has been featured in Palette Poetry, BBC, BuzzFeed, KUT Austin Radio, The Austin Chronicle and the Courier Newsroom, and won Breakwater Review’s 2024 Peseroff Poetry Prize. Find her work at enaganguly.com or on Instagram: @enaganguly