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........

© USA TODAY