• About
  • Jewish Community Directory
  • Subscription Information
  • Contact Us
American Jewish World
No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • All
    • Africa
    • Asia
    • Australia & New Zealand
    • Europe
    • Israel/Mideast
    • Latin America
    • Minnesota
    • US & Canada
    Shoah survivor, fundraiser Francelyne Lurie dies at 84

    Shoah survivor, fundraiser Francelyne Lurie dies at 84

    Temple Israel’s Rabbi Simeon ‘Sim’ Glaser dies at 67

    Temple Israel’s Rabbi Simeon ‘Sim’ Glaser dies at 67

    Israel, ‘an almost magical story’

    Israel, ‘an almost magical story’

  • Arts
    • All
    • Blue Box
    • Books & Literature
    • Music
    • Televison & Film
    • Theater & Performing Arts
    • Visual Arts
    Set a place for Andrew Zimmern at the dinner table

    Set a place for Andrew Zimmern at the dinner table

    Righteous Diplomats saved Jews in the Shoah

    Righteous Diplomats saved Jews in the Shoah

    Sharon’s got a brand-new bag

    Sharon’s got a brand-new bag

  • Lifestyle
    • All
    • Fashion
    • Food
    • Health & Wellness
    • Home & Garden
    • Travel & Culture
    Robyn Frank finds her niche in the cookie business

    Robyn Frank finds her niche in the cookie business

    Editorial: More from my European vacation

    Editorial: More from my European vacation

    Our Rosh Hashana special edition

    Our Rosh Hashana special edition

  • Editorial
  • Opinion
  • AJW Digital Archives
  • News
    • All
    • Africa
    • Asia
    • Australia & New Zealand
    • Europe
    • Israel/Mideast
    • Latin America
    • Minnesota
    • US & Canada
    Shoah survivor, fundraiser Francelyne Lurie dies at 84

    Shoah survivor, fundraiser Francelyne Lurie dies at 84

    Temple Israel’s Rabbi Simeon ‘Sim’ Glaser dies at 67

    Temple Israel’s Rabbi Simeon ‘Sim’ Glaser dies at 67

    Israel, ‘an almost magical story’

    Israel, ‘an almost magical story’

  • Arts
    • All
    • Blue Box
    • Books & Literature
    • Music
    • Televison & Film
    • Theater & Performing Arts
    • Visual Arts
    Set a place for Andrew Zimmern at the dinner table

    Set a place for Andrew Zimmern at the dinner table

    Righteous Diplomats saved Jews in the Shoah

    Righteous Diplomats saved Jews in the Shoah

    Sharon’s got a brand-new bag

    Sharon’s got a brand-new bag

  • Lifestyle
    • All
    • Fashion
    • Food
    • Health & Wellness
    • Home & Garden
    • Travel & Culture
    Robyn Frank finds her niche in the cookie business

    Robyn Frank finds her niche in the cookie business

    Editorial: More from my European vacation

    Editorial: More from my European vacation

    Our Rosh Hashana special edition

    Our Rosh Hashana special edition

  • Editorial
  • Opinion
  • AJW Digital Archives
No Result
View All Result
Morning News
No Result
View All Result
Home Arts Books & Literature

Understanding the planet of the Americans

'A Beginner’s Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious,' by Roya Hakakian, Knopf, 222 pages, $27

mordecai by mordecai
May 10, 2021
in Arts, Books & Literature
0
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Reviewed by NEAL GENDLER

If you’ve ever wondered what America would feel like to someone from another planet, A Beginner’s Guide to America is your answer.

READ ALSO

Set a place for Andrew Zimmern at the dinner table

Righteous Diplomats saved Jews in the Shoah

Earthling Roya Hakakian arrives in the mid-1980s as an older teen, she and her mother fleeing a society so different it almost might be another world: Iran.

Here, she finds women in tank tops, hair uncovered; people talking aloud, not whispering; couples openly embracing and kissing; and big cities noisy in “all the ways that a people who have not been cowed into silence exercise their sonorous existence.”

Here, one needn’t fear large groups, which previously “meant a demonstration and riot police,” she says.

Entering school, backpacks aren’t inspected for forbidden books and CDs, your body not sniffed for forbidden perfume.

You log instantly into an uncensored internet. Arriving, you see the names on officers’ uniforms: “Sanchez, McWilliams, Cho, Al-Hamad — and by God, all of them Americans!”

With a “white card,” she says, an immigrant “will be a ‘resident alien,’ able to live and work in the United States, though for your foreseeable future you will feel the alien far more than the resident.”

The hardest thing? “Learning to live with a heart that is not beating to the rhythm of some perpetual foreboding.”

A Beginner’s Guide is the third book by Hakakian, teacher at a writing workshop at Yale and a fellow at its Davenport College.

American life means great changes — for the better, but with practical, linguistic and emotional difficulties she describes with charm. Her witty insights — like Americans’ obsession with weather — also are a delightful education for the American-born, helping us to understand the difficulties of the immigrant experience and to see ourselves anew.

“You wonder if the native-born truly grasp that the pairing of ‘inalienable’ and ‘rights’ is an invention as groundbreaking as that of the steam engine,” she says. “Only you, whose ambitions had always to be tamed, by the fear of God, elders or the Leader, can recognize the majesty of the American design.”

To such an immigrant, birdwatching may seem frivolous, but it is possible “because large swaths of time open up in the lives of those who no longer have to stand in line for basic staples or be anxious about the conflicts and crises that authoritarian governments invent to keep the masses busy.”

But Hakakian’s enchantment doesn’t obscure observations of peculiarities and negatives, from what she considers the ungenerous oddity of “going Dutch” in restaurants to charity taking extremes of ostentatious fund-raising galas.

The second part of her book is called “Welcome to Selifstan,” a nation in which a person believes that “the common individual [has] the same social standing as the nobility. So he believes he has inherent value.”

One result is the particularly American drive for self-improvement.

In a section titled “Where ‘I’ is King,” she says: “You should learn sooner rather than later that ‘you’ and ‘I’ are America’s most celebrated pronouns.”

Children are taught “to boldly begin with ‘I’ and forcefully state what the ‘I’ sees, hears, feels and believes in…. You, on the other hand, had to dodge the censors and other bureaucrats all your life. You worked hard to master the art of disguise, hiding your feelings and intentions….  to avoid arrest, interrogation and imprisonment.”

But elevation of the self can lead to arrogant national self-centeredness.

The fancy rich “readily blame their government for much of what is wrong in the world,” she says “Among this elite, being critical of America is not an opinion. It is faith.

“This kind of self-deprecation may be mistaken for modesty. But it is, in fact, a disguise for narcissism, for it places America at the center of all events, where her mere intervention, however brief, can forever alter a nation’s destiny.”

Eight pages lament the lot of undocumented immigrants, ever fearful of deportation and typically laboring at low-wage jobs Americans won’t take — from picking crops to cleaning.

A Beginner’s Guide to America, which deals cleverly with American norms, including romance, is “part memoir, part reportage and part a work of imagination.” How much is the last scarcely matters.

“My greatest hope has been to give an unmediated access to a narrative that has become disfigured by overzealous emissaries on both sides of the political debate,” she says.

The story of immigration “is the drama at the heart of the American identity,” typical not of the rich or supremely talented immigrant, she says, but of those who will say: “We arrived with no English, only a few dollars, and no one to depend on. It was hard at first. Work was grueling, but look at us now.”

***

Neal Gendler is a Minnesapolis writer and editor.

(American Jewish World, May 2021)

Related Posts

Set a place for Andrew Zimmern at the dinner table
Televison & Film

Set a place for Andrew Zimmern at the dinner table

May 19, 2023
Righteous Diplomats saved Jews in the Shoah
Books & Literature

Righteous Diplomats saved Jews in the Shoah

March 28, 2023
Sharon’s got a brand-new bag
Music

Sharon’s got a brand-new bag

March 9, 2023
Sam climbs her way to a better life
Books & Literature

Sam climbs her way to a better life

February 17, 2023
Bill Charlap Trio draws on a vast repertoire
Music

Bill Charlap Trio draws on a vast repertoire

February 17, 2023
‘Trayf’ probes Chasidic life
Theater & Performing Arts

‘Trayf’ probes Chasidic life

February 17, 2023
Next Post
David Ira Goldstein made his mark on theater in Arizona

David Ira Goldstein made his mark on theater in Arizona

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

RECENT ARTICLES

Shoah survivor, fundraiser Francelyne Lurie dies at 84

Shoah survivor, fundraiser Francelyne Lurie dies at 84

May 21, 2023
Temple Israel’s Rabbi Simeon ‘Sim’ Glaser dies at 67

Temple Israel’s Rabbi Simeon ‘Sim’ Glaser dies at 67

May 21, 2023
Editorial: A mosque is like a synagogue

Editorial: A mosque is like a synagogue

May 21, 2023
Israel, ‘an almost magical story’

Israel, ‘an almost magical story’

May 19, 2023
Set a place for Andrew Zimmern at the dinner table

Set a place for Andrew Zimmern at the dinner table

May 19, 2023

About

Since 1912 the AJW has served as an important news resource for the Jewish community. The Jewish World unites the main Jewish communities in St. Paul and Minneapolis, as well as those in Duluth, Rochester and smaller cities, and bridges the divides between the various Jewish religious streams.

Quick Links

  • About the AJW
  • Advertising Information
  • Submission Guidelines
  • Subscription Information
  • Jewish Community Directory

Contact Us

The American Jewish World
3249 Hennepin Ave., Suite 245
Minneapolis, MN 55408

Tel: 612.824.0030 / Fax: 612.823.0753
editor@ajwnews.com

  • Buy JNews
  • Landing Page
  • Documentation
  • Support Forum

© 2023 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.

No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
  • News
  • Food
  • Health & Wellness
  • Lifestyle
  • Opinion

© 2023 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.