In her new book, “Conditional Citizens,” Laila Lalami says Americans who don't enjoy full rights because of their identities want the U.S. to succeed. But they can't avoid the chasm between our purported values and the realities of oppression, she says.
An authoritative history of post 9/11 America has not yet been written. We may be too close to the events of that day — and the weeks and years after — to see it clearly.Conditional CitizensYou're either with us, or you're against us
. She sets out to expose the false simplicity of that idea."My life resisted the kind of easy categories that the head of state had outlined for everyone," she writes. That is true not just for her, but for an entire class of people whom she describes as"conditional citizens." These are the many Americans who cannot enjoy full rights because of markers of identity, such as race, gender, sexual orientation or religion. For conditional citizens, duality is the inevitable constant.
Though who is allowed to criticize America is a matter of privilege, Lalami says. Donald Trump can call this country"the laughing stock of the world," and still be president. Yet when Lalami has criticized this country — for example, describing the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan as an attack against innocent civilians — she has been met with disbelief and suspicion. She is also expected to be a voice for Islam and an expert on terrorism. As she toured the U.S.
Casual encounters in everyday life prompt her to probe American history and unearth forgotten facts and significant erasures. For example, Muslims have been a longstanding part of the country, starting with many of the Africans brought to the U.S. in the transatlantic slave trade. Only they were not able to build mosques alongside the churches they'd built for white settlers.
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