MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewLalami is less insightful when she widens her lens to argue that all minorities in the United States—including people born here but of a race, faith or gender not shared by the dominant majority—are discriminated against by their government and others, a heavily worn argument ... is best when Lalami turns inward: How has her treatment by our government and fellow citizens been far from the ideal? ... I wish Lalami had dug much deeper to show in this, her first nonfiction book, how this inequality affects her. I wondered: As an English professor who lives in Santa Monica, Calif., among the nation’s wealthier and most liberal enclaves, was she buffered from the worst of the inequalities she describes? You don’t have to look far in Los Angeles County, where I also live and where 34 percent of the residents were born in another country, to show how these inequalities play out daily. She could have cast a wider narrative net to tell these stories through friends and acquaintances ... While her book convincingly lays out the inequalities among citizens, she’s woefully short on remedies and specific ideas for achieving change. How do you make voting accessible to all? What are the best approaches locally, statewide or in other countries that we should fight to have enacted wherever we live?
