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4.31 AVERAGE
4.31 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Genocide, Gun violence, Racism, Violence, Xenophobia, Police brutality, Trafficking, Religious bigotry, Cultural appropriation, Colonisation, War
Minor: Eating disorder, Slavery, Torture, Deportation
4.5
Essential reading full of incredible, insightful essays.
Faves:
Swimmer
On the Blackness of the Panther
How Not to Be
After Migration: The Once and Future Kings
Luck of the Irish
The Naked Man
The Long Answer
An American, Told
On Being Kim Kardashian
No Es Suficiente
Skittles
Essential reading full of incredible, insightful essays.
Faves:
Swimmer
On the Blackness of the Panther
How Not to Be
After Migration: The Once and Future Kings
Luck of the Irish
The Naked Man
The Long Answer
An American, Told
On Being Kim Kardashian
No Es Suficiente
Skittles
A challenging read but so good and I think a required reading for Americans. Some of the essays made me laugh out loud with the author’s smart, snarky writing. Some made me tear up and feel profound sadness and also shame/guilt over what white Americans have done to their own country men and women who are of different color and/or religion. Some essays made me just so darn angry- I kept thinking we all were once immigrants or at least came from family who were immigrants so why does one group deserve greater respect, better safety, healthcare, and education over those not from same socioeconomic white House’s? Super smart writing by some super smart people.
The editors published a collection of essays by immigrants living in the UK and later decided there should be a U.S. edition, and it's the latter one that I read. Wow, what a knockout collection! I recently saw a friend say she hasn't learned her lesson with anthologies, that inevitably there will be good ones and some clunkers. But I thought every single essay in this collection was 5-star. I personally connected better with some and less with others, but they were still all well worth reading.
I felt "Juana Azurduy Versus Christopher Columbus" by Adrian and Sebastian Villar Rojas was a bit more academic in tone (including footnotes) than some of the other less formal essays, and it also didn't reference the U.S. very much except in passing. That's generally not a problem, but the volume is supposed to focus on immigration to the U.S. so it was a bit of an odd fit. Another GoodReads reviewer strongly disliked "Tour Diary" by Basim Usmani, but it was actually among my favorites, largely because it distinguished itself from the other essays in format and tone.
As I was reading it, I just kept saying, "Wow, another excellent one!" after every single essay. Highly recommended.
I felt "Juana Azurduy Versus Christopher Columbus" by Adrian and Sebastian Villar Rojas was a bit more academic in tone (including footnotes) than some of the other less formal essays, and it also didn't reference the U.S. very much except in passing. That's generally not a problem, but the volume is supposed to focus on immigration to the U.S. so it was a bit of an odd fit. Another GoodReads reviewer strongly disliked "Tour Diary" by Basim Usmani, but it was actually among my favorites, largely because it distinguished itself from the other essays in format and tone.
As I was reading it, I just kept saying, "Wow, another excellent one!" after every single essay. Highly recommended.
This collection of essays was genuinely one of the most powerful and impactful books I have read in a long time. I loved the unique voices of each of the authors that contributed and was moved getting to hear stories and experiences that were intimate to them about their treatment in the U.S./U.K. It was disheartening, but not surprising to hear the experiences of first- and second- immigrants in the years following the 2016 election. This book was such a wonderful journey and I would recommend it to everyone!
Each experience richly distinct, the collection as a whole makes an impression on you and puts you in a place to inquire more.
** use for Unit 3 immigrants (joy/resilence > survival mentality)
essential Q/topic: the luxury of choosing the climate of how/when your identity can thrive, in gaining American what do we lose, all the tactics of cultural erasure, POC explaining *eyeroll*, what is home (homesick) to you, aspiring whiteness -> bland, in what POCs have held despite xyz how can we celebrate more the victory of being grounded in who you are and where you come from
** use for Unit 3 immigrants (joy/resilence > survival mentality)
essential Q/topic: the luxury of choosing the climate of how/when your identity can thrive, in gaining American what do we lose, all the tactics of cultural erasure, POC explaining *eyeroll*, what is home (homesick) to you, aspiring whiteness -> bland, in what POCs have held despite xyz how can we celebrate more the victory of being grounded in who you are and where you come from
Amazing collection of essays. Would highly recommend. Listen to it via audible & will definitely revisit with my hard copy.
A collection of 26 non-fiction essays by 1st generation or 2nd generation American writers written in the post-Trump era. It has 26 unique voices and writing styles telling a variation of deeply personal stories to family stories to cultural stories. But the underlying theme in all the essays involve the fear and anger and embarrassment about being an "other" in a country that is currently telling all immigrants "we don't want you".
It's fitting that I'm writing this review in the week that the President of the United States has told 4 Congresswomen, 3 of whom were born in the United States, to "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came". He has since doubled down on this racist nativist rhetoric (which really should be no surprise to anyone). I'll leave NPR and The Washington Post to go into the details of the history of that language, the hidden and not so hidden dog whistles. As a non-white US born citizen married to a naturalized citizen, it's a terrifying moment in US history. These essays don't give any sort of comfort to the reader, instead, it gives readers like me the knowledge that there are other people scared shitless because we realize how tenuous things really are for us. That the "first they came for...then they came for..." warning is veering dangerously close to us "others". That there are people who have similar life experiences despite living very different lives just because of what we look like or our "judged status" in this country. Me being born in the United States didn't stop the tollbooth operator on the George Washington Bridge from playing the "where are you from" game with me during rush hour traffic with the bridge backed up. Or the security guard at the Getty in LA while I was just looking at paintings. But the "friendly" nature of this microaggression or maybe not so mico aggression can change at the drop of a hat. And it has because the top office of this country has not just allowed it to happen, but encouraged it.
While some of the essays either connected with me more or were written in a manner that I could more fully grasp, every essay is worth reading. Because every essay is a personal story about what it's like to be an "other". Every essay is a personal story about how they were made to feel like an "other" by "majority Americans" whether it was done purposefully or not. Every essay is a unique voice telling a unique story about a sadly not so unique time. Though it's difficult to pick a favorite from 26 stories, I did read this book having heard Fatima Farheen Mirza read part of her essay "Skittles" at BookCon this year. It's about how isolated her family felt after moving to Texas because their neighbors shunned them for being Muslim. Her brother was constantly being called a terrorist in middle school. But a year after their move, a few days after Donald Trump Jr. had compared Syrian refugees to a bowl of poisoned skittles their neighbors sent their young daughter to Fatima's parents' house with a ziplock bag full of skittles. They knew the message their neighbors were trying to send. What people in power say and how they say it matters.
There are more than enough gems in this essay collection. 5/5.
It's fitting that I'm writing this review in the week that the President of the United States has told 4 Congresswomen, 3 of whom were born in the United States, to "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came". He has since doubled down on this racist nativist rhetoric (which really should be no surprise to anyone). I'll leave NPR and The Washington Post to go into the details of the history of that language, the hidden and not so hidden dog whistles. As a non-white US born citizen married to a naturalized citizen, it's a terrifying moment in US history. These essays don't give any sort of comfort to the reader, instead, it gives readers like me the knowledge that there are other people scared shitless because we realize how tenuous things really are for us. That the "first they came for...then they came for..." warning is veering dangerously close to us "others". That there are people who have similar life experiences despite living very different lives just because of what we look like or our "judged status" in this country. Me being born in the United States didn't stop the tollbooth operator on the George Washington Bridge from playing the "where are you from" game with me during rush hour traffic with the bridge backed up. Or the security guard at the Getty in LA while I was just looking at paintings. But the "friendly" nature of this microaggression or maybe not so mico aggression can change at the drop of a hat. And it has because the top office of this country has not just allowed it to happen, but encouraged it.
While some of the essays either connected with me more or were written in a manner that I could more fully grasp, every essay is worth reading. Because every essay is a personal story about what it's like to be an "other". Every essay is a personal story about how they were made to feel like an "other" by "majority Americans" whether it was done purposefully or not. Every essay is a unique voice telling a unique story about a sadly not so unique time. Though it's difficult to pick a favorite from 26 stories, I did read this book having heard Fatima Farheen Mirza read part of her essay "Skittles" at BookCon this year. It's about how isolated her family felt after moving to Texas because their neighbors shunned them for being Muslim. Her brother was constantly being called a terrorist in middle school. But a year after their move, a few days after Donald Trump Jr. had compared Syrian refugees to a bowl of poisoned skittles their neighbors sent their young daughter to Fatima's parents' house with a ziplock bag full of skittles. They knew the message their neighbors were trying to send. What people in power say and how they say it matters.
There are more than enough gems in this essay collection. 5/5.