31 Dec / Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America by Laila Lalami [in Booklist]
*STARRED REVIEW
Laila Lalami dovetails her own journey as a Morocco-born, UK-and US-educated, naturalized Muslim American, expanding into a socio-historical examination of what it means to be a “conditional citizen” in the United States. Conditional citizens, she explains, “are Americans who cannot enjoy the full rights, liberties, and protections of citizenship because of arbitrary markers of identity [including] their race, ethnicity, gender, and natal origin… features over which they have no control.”
Her own “conditional citizen” stories are many: border agents asking her husband about trading cows for her; their terrified US-born daughter fearing deportation; facing as many (more?) questions about terrorism as about her actual writing. Beyond the individual, her examples seem neverending – reminders include California-born Wong Kim Ark, who sought the Supreme Court to recognize his birthright citizenship; the irony that indigenous people as members of sovereign nations remained ineligible for US citizenship until 1924; that even Obama – as the most powerful man in the world – couldn’t escape the birther conspiracy theory.
That Lalami herself narrates her nuanced, intimate nonfiction debut adds illuminating, indelible resonance. Remarkably composed and extraordinarily controlled, Lalami reveals, challenges, asserts, and ultimately claims her well-earned place: “Yet I am still here.”
Review: “Media,” Booklist, December 15, 2020
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2020