Lalami came to the US from Morocco, earned her Ph.D., passed her citizenship test, and became an American. She then spent years discovering how conditional that status actually is. This sharp collection of personal essays explores how accidents of birth like race, national origin, and gender still determine who gets treated as a full member of the American family and who doesn’t. This work feels even more urgent now than when it was first published in 2020. It should be required reading for every American.
