Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.31 AVERAGE
4.31 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
now whenever someone is talking about their culture i just say “u should write an essay for the good immigrant sequel”
maybe it would be called ‘the better immigrant’
maybe it would be called ‘the better immigrant’
3.5 stars.
it's really difficult to rate such personal experiences with a 5-star-rating, so my rating is not so much for the content itself, rather the writing and narration of the essays (I listened to the audiobook version of this).
my favourites include:
- How to Write Iranian-America, or The Last Essay: Porochista Khakpour
- Sidra (in 12 Movements): Rahawa Haile
- On Loneliness: Fatimah Asghar
- Shithole Nation: Jim St. Germain
- The Naked Man: Chigozie Obioma
- Your Father's Country: Alexander Chee
- Skittles: Fatima Farheen Mirza
- 244 Million: Mona Chalabi
it's really difficult to rate such personal experiences with a 5-star-rating, so my rating is not so much for the content itself, rather the writing and narration of the essays (I listened to the audiobook version of this).
my favourites include:
- How to Write Iranian-America, or The Last Essay: Porochista Khakpour
- Sidra (in 12 Movements): Rahawa Haile
- On Loneliness: Fatimah Asghar
- Shithole Nation: Jim St. Germain
- The Naked Man: Chigozie Obioma
- Your Father's Country: Alexander Chee
- Skittles: Fatima Farheen Mirza
- 244 Million: Mona Chalabi
informative
reflective
medium-paced
I read this for school, but I really enjoyed this book. I found some of the writings to be a little confusing, but overall these stories share a really important message about immigration and how immigrants must shape themselves to be seen as acceptable.
There's a lot to unpack about this book. I really love the Editor's selection of stories, from the (white) Irish immigrant to the Latinx authors exploring the role of the Spanish language as it relates to their identities and that the writers were from all over the professional spectrum. These really are John Q. Publics' stories.
I also enjoyed the inclusion of Puerto Rico which is in that fuzzy gray area of American but not. I appreciated that while Trump and his policies were present in these stories, they were broader than that addressing that these issues in American society were exacerbated but not created by Trump's presidency. To that end, the Skittles story and the family's move from the Bay Area to Texas in 2016 was especially poignant.
A wonderful if heartbreaking read, and imagine there are 260 or 2600 more similar stories that could be told especially in light of the events in spring & summer 2020.
I also enjoyed the inclusion of Puerto Rico which is in that fuzzy gray area of American but not. I appreciated that while Trump and his policies were present in these stories, they were broader than that addressing that these issues in American society were exacerbated but not created by Trump's presidency. To that end, the Skittles story and the family's move from the Bay Area to Texas in 2016 was especially poignant.
A wonderful if heartbreaking read, and imagine there are 260 or 2600 more similar stories that could be told especially in light of the events in spring & summer 2020.
This is an excellent collection of short stories on immigrant experiences in America. These stories really make you stop and think about race relations in America.
I really loved Samantha’s review of this book, which I’ll share here:
If there is a list of Books Every White American Should Read, this should be on it. There is a lot of nuance that's absent from the mainstream immigration conversation, and an anthology like this highlights that in these essays on wide-ranging immigrant experiences. It should be common sense that a Mexican immigrant doesn't face the same challenges or treatment as, say, an Indian immigrant, and that comes through very clearly in these writers' stories. I also appreciate many of these essays speaking to the first-gen experience, as that is also a very specific group of people that deals with very specific identity challenges and isolation.
Many writers I love are in this book, and it's honestly a little heartwarming reading not only their stories of struggle, but their stories of success as creatives, despite the deck being stacked against them.
Imagine the hell of dying in America while your parents envision the beauty of dying in Iran, and you wondering there was ever anything in between for you. - Porochista Khakpour, p.11
I learned very early that to be an immigrant in this country meant I didn’t have the luxury of choosing what I wanted, only what was necessary. - Nicole Dennis-Benn, p.18
In my wildest dreams, there is no king. I killed the king. The king is dead. All power to the people. - Teju Cole, p.39
Truth is not stranger than fiction, but it is more specific, more contradictory, more hectic, more layered. - Teju Cole, p.42
The general is where solidarity begins, but the specific is where our lives come into proper view. I don’t want to hear “Africa” unless it’s a context in which someone would also say “Asia” or “Europe.” Ever notice how real Paris is? That’s how real I need Lagos to be. Folks can talk about Paris all day without once generalizing about Europe. … You can’t go to “Africa,” fam. Africa is almost twelve million square miles. I want to be particular about being particular about what we are talking about when we talk about Africa. - Teju Cole, p.50
People of color learn early to take responsibility for creating their own spaces and their own safety, whether that means choosing a university in a “diverse” area or simply looking for another person of color in the room. - Priya Minhas, p.57
I don’t know where a word starts or ends, just the feeling that I’m left with when it’s gone. - Fatimah Asghar, p.81
I both belong and don’t belong to America. When I’m in America, I’m constantly reminded that I’m not actually from here, that I can never have the same as white Americans. But when I’m abroad, I feel the most American I’ve ever felt: hyper aware that my cultural reference points are American, that I can’t shake my American entitlement, that once I open my mouth and talk, I am perceived as an American. - Fatimah Asghar, p.87
This ban strikes me as illogical too, given that relatively few immigrants from these countries make it to the U.S. in the first place. Illogical, that is, unless the logic you’re working with is “Let’s make sure all the brown people know they’re not wanted here.” - Maeve Higgins, p.109
It’s dumb luck that I was born white and Irish. And that luck, combined with a history of radicalized immigration policies, meant that I was allowed to move here, to a country whose leaders look at me and see themselves, and welcome me with open arms as they push others away. - Maeve Higgins, p.115
Jiggy and many others never had the opportunity to visit a college campus with mommy and daddy. No SAT preps, sleepaway camps, studying abroad, or prom dates. Instead, we were swept by the urban conveyor belt into Spofford Juvenile Detention, Rikers Island, and funeral homes. - Jim St. Germain, p.136
Near here, east of Crown Heights, just a ten-minute walk or a few stops on the number 2 train, yet another world existed: Park Slope. In this neighborhood, many of the kids’ paths were already carved out for them too. With million-dollar brownstones, yoga studios, therapy offices, outdoor cafes, gourmet supermarkets, well-funded schools, piano lessons, and parents who were always more involved than necessary. It was nearly impossible for the kids here to fuck it up. The streets were cleaner, and the police didn’t feel like an occupying force. The “American Dream” was the floor here, not the ceiling. - Jim St. Germain, p.137
There is this notion that we, as black and brown people, take great pleasure in talking about racism and oppression. One thing I’m certain of is this: no oppressed person finds joy in addressing the very thing that stymied his or her fullest potential. - Jim St. Germain, p.139
The film now possibly about a writer discovering that Korea is the free country with the democratically elected president, elected by a majority, and the United States is the one with the man elected undemocratically, and bent on ruling as a dictator. - Alexander Chee, pg.177
I moved before Trump: when it still felt like America was a place that welcomed people, or at least had some intentions of doing so. I moved just before the president emboldened the worst of Americans to be open in their hatred of immigrants. I moved just before this hatred began to be enshrined, more and more, into law. - Jean Hannah Edelstein, pg.209
But Trump is white. He is as white as the cult of whiteness that brought him, not independent from it, nor its founder. Because America has not been free of racial superiority until now, and Donald Trump is neither capable nor required to convert the unprejudiced into fascists. Trumps’s expertise was never in convincing a nation of what they needed but in giving a nation what they already wanted. A nation who should not be white at all yet sees only through the lens of whiteness.
Here is a man who may well subscribe to the temperament of reality TV, of candid straight talk and keeping it real, but the freedom to speak outrageously and with reckless abandon was all along the bedrock of white supremacy. With it, the confidence to act however they wish and still remain confident that the law makes an exception for them—the police officer who murders a black child, the civilian who marches armed and dressed as military, or the president who grabs a pussy, then tears up the constitutional protection of religious freedom. - Chimene Suleyman, p.214
Sometimes they (boarder patrol) just want to fuck with your head a bit. If you’re a person of color coming into the USA for a visit or tour, it’s best not to come via road. Buy the flight. - Basim Usmani, p.239
Over the course of just a handful of years in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a current of human displacement rooted in capitalism, opportunity, starvation, and war took place on a scale greater than the one witnessed by three entire centuries of exploration. - Adrián and Sebastián Villar Rojas, p.252
Even when I was little, I understood the privilege that comes with sounding white. People trust you. White people trust you. - Dani Fernandez, p.266
Reading the scripts of several other writers, I realized they saw Mexicans only as poor laborers. And that was it. The entirety of who we are as a people often came down to poor, brown people who speak broken English. Which we know to them means uneducated. It doesn’t matter what other language you speak or how many languages you may know. If you can’t speak English, to white Americans you are uneducated. - Dani Fernandez, p.272
For some reason, sounding “American” means sounding white, despite the fact that the US is a country made up of immigrants. - Dani Fernandez, p.275
I was surprised too by how casually, how openly, and without shame he spoke, and how without shame his platform was received: how they cheered, celebrated, as though he was not just emboldening them but also liberating them. … “Don’t worry. He’s just one man.” And then, as though to convince us, or themselves, “There are checks in place. This is not legal.” - Fatima Farheen Mirza, p.278
“It’s all right, Fatima. He’s just one man. His hate is his burden to bear.” - Fatima Farheen Mirza, p.282
For years we had been told it was just one man, not tied to anything greater. Yet just one man takes a stage and addresses a nation, and the next day my brother is shoved in the hallway of his high school. And just one man tweets a photo likening refugees to a bowl of poisonous Skittles, and that very week Skittles are delivered to my mother. - Fatima Farheen Mirza, p.285