Conditional Citizens
On Belonging in America
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Conditional Citizens
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Narrated by:
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Laila Lalami
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Written by:
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Laila Lalami
About this listen
A New York Times Editors' Choice • Best Book of the Year: Time, NPR, Bookpage, L.A. Times
What does it mean to be American? In this starkly illuminating and impassioned book, Pulitzer Prize-finalist Laila Lalami recounts her unlikely journey from Moroccan immigrant to US citizen, using it as a starting point for her exploration of American rights, liberties, and protections.
"Sharp, bracingly clear essays." (Entertainment Weekly)
Tapping into history, politics, and literature, she elucidates how accidents of birth - such as national origin, race, and gender - that once determined the boundaries of Americanness still cast their shadows today.
Lalami poignantly illustrates how white supremacy survives through adaptation and legislation, with the result that a caste system is maintained that keeps the modern equivalent of white male landowners at the top of the social hierarchy. Conditional citizens, she argues, are all the people with whom America embraces with one arm and pushes away with the other.
Brilliantly argued and deeply personal, Conditional Citizens weaves together Lalami’s own experiences with explorations of the place of nonwhites in the broader American culture.
©2020 Laila Lalami (P)2020 Random House AudioWhat the critics say
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction
One of:
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"In this eloquent and troubling account, novelist and National Book Award-finalist Lalami (The Other Americans) draws on her personal history as 'an immigrant, a woman, an Arab, and a Muslim' to argue that becoming a US citizen does not necessarily mean becoming 'an equal member of the American family'.... This profound inquiry into the American immigrant experience deserves to be widely read." (Publishers Weekly, starred review)
“Consistently thoughtful and incisive, the book confronts the perils of our modern age with truths to inspire the coalition-building necessary to American cultural and democratic survival. A bracingly provocative collection perfect for our times.” (Kirkus reviews)
"No-holds-barred...thread[s] together the experiences of a breathtakingly diverse underclass. This constituency is increasingly finding its voice, and she is amplifying what had long been intimate, complicated inner thoughts." (NPR)