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Mar 16, 2021 | ISBN 9780525656067 Pre-Order
Mar 16, 2021 | ISBN 9780525656074 Pre-Order
Mar 16, 2021 | 480 Minutes Pre-Order
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Available from:
Mar 16, 2021 | ISBN 9780525656067
Mar 16, 2021 | ISBN 9780525656074
Mar 16, 2021 | ISBN 9780593291979
480 Minutes
A stirring, witty, and poignant glimpse into the bewildering American immigrant experience from someone who has lived it. Also, a mirror held up to America.Into the maelstrom of unprecedented contemporary debates about immigrants in the United States, this perfectly timed book gives us a portrait of what the new immigrant experience in America is really like. Written as a “guide” for the newly arrived, and providing “practical information and advice,” Roya Hakakian, an immigrant herself, reveals what those who settle here love about the country, what they miss about their homes, the cruelty of some Americans, and the unceasing generosity of others. She captures the texture of life in a new place in all its complexity, laying bare both its beauty and its darkness as she discusses race, sex, love, death, consumerism, and what it is like to be from a country that is in America’s crosshairs. Her tenderly perceptive and surprisingly humorous account invites us to see ourselves as we appear to others, making it possible for us to rediscover our many American gifts through the perspective of the outsider. In shattering myths and embracing painful contradictions that are unique to this place, A Beginner’s Guide to America is Hakakian’s candid love letter to America.
ROYA HAKAKIAN is the author of Assassins of the Turquoise Palace and Journey from the Land of No, and has published two collections of poetry in Persian. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times and The Wall Street… More about Roya Hakakian
“Hakakian’s book is a stirring, insightful, funny and uplifting book. Her real predecessor is Alexis de Tocqueville. A Beginner’s Guide to America is a worthy successor to his classic work. Hakakian captures the balance of love for America’s ideals, and honest perception of its imperfect achievement of them, that together with the resolve always to do better than we are doing now, is the heart of any honorable American patriotism. Count me among those thrilled to hear the vital message of this intelligent and graceful book.”—Anthony Kronman, author of The Assault on American Excellence
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