With all the controversy about immigration going on, I thought reading Roya Hakakian’s A Beginner’s Guide to America: For the immigrant and the Curious (2021) might help me understand the contemporary immigrant experience.
Roya Hakakian is an immigrant from Iran. She came to America in 1984 and is now a naturalized citizen. In Part I of her book, Hakakian stresses the importance of learning the language. She stresses the importance of speaking English with native speakers to learn the current slang and word usage.
I shouldn’t have been surprised–but I was–that Hakakian writes about falling in love in America. How sexual experiences will be different from what was “normal” in an immigrant’s former country. She gives some sound advice on being cautious and careful while learning a new set of American behaviors.
Hakakian had me laughing when she wrote about baseball. She claims it’s common for immigrants to be baffled by the sport. On the more serious side, Hakakian says anti-immigrant sentiment (and violence) is growing and precautions must be taken to protect an immigrant’s safety.
It’s clear that Roya Hakakian loves America despite its flaws. She delivers sound advice to newcomers and hopes they will come to love America as much as she does. A Beginner’s Guide to America is an inspiring, heart-felt, and hopeful book. GRADE: A
Table of Contents:
Prologue xiii
Part I
1 Upon Arrival in America the Beautiful 3
First Inspections 4
Stepping Onto the American Street 8
The Road to Your Destination 10
An Exhausted Finale 13
2 Genesis Redux 15
Your First Unplanned Encounter 16
A Mosey in the New Neighborhood 21
Welcome to the Free World’s Wide Web 23
Grocery Shopping 2.0 25
The ABCs of American Peculiarities 28
The Immigrant’s TV Guide 31
3 On Résumé Writing, ESL School, and Other Post-Arrival Drudgeries 34
Your Life on a Page 36
Back to School Again 43
Your American Baptism 44
Two Ways to Conjugate 46
You, Second Edition 51
4 On Public Transportation, Getting Lost, and Other Post-Arrival Tribulations 54
First Transportation Woes 56
Arrival: A Tragedy In Five Acts 61
Viva La Life! Down With Death! 67
Of Heaven and Hell in the American Park 72
Part II
5 Welcome to Selfistan 79
The Birds, The Fish, The Trees, and The Founding Fathers 80
The American: A Tribe of One 84
Where “I” is King 87
The Exception of the American Farewell Now is the American Future 91
The Vices and the Virtues of an American Lover 96
Love’s New Language 101
Your First Romance: A Few Warnings 107
6 The Diaspora: Can’t Live With Them, Can’t Live Without Them 111
The Abridged Catalogue of Belonging 112
The Good in Diaspora 116
To Be or Not To Be: In The Ethnic Enclave 129
The Bad in Diaspora 132
The Immigrant’s Affliction 137
The Ugly in Diaspora 143
The End of Cake 145
And Yet, It Can Be Worse 147
7 The loveable, the Inexplicable, and the Infuriating About America 156
A Strange Brand of Generous 158
On Squirrels and Americans 163
The Thanks You Owe 169
What Not to Learn from Americans 171
The Undoing of America 174
E as in Émigré, as in Excellence 183
8 On Refusing to Move to the Back of the American Bus 186
Anti-Immigrant Vitriol as the Other Apple Pie 189
All Men are Created Equal Except Some Men 192
Give Me Your Poor Vs. Your Fat Cats 195
America’s Dark Future 198
The Most Reliable Gods 201
The Nine Circles of the Vetting Process 204
Your Story, Your Prayer 207
A Covenant in Red, White, and Blue 209
Acknowledgments 215
Sources 217
