Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American

by Wajahat Ali

Overview

“Go back to where you came from, you terrorist!”

This is just one of the many warm, lovely, and helpful tips that Wajahat Ali and other children of immigrants receive on a daily basis. Go back where, exactly? Fremont, California, where he grew up, but is now an unaffordable place to live? Or Pakistan, the country his parents left behind a half-century ago?

Growing up living the suburban American dream, young Wajahat devoured comic books (devoid of brown superheroes) and fielded well-intentioned advice from uncles and aunties. (“Become a doctor!”) He had turmeric stains under his fingernails, was accident-prone, suffered from OCD, and wore Husky pants, but he was as American as his neighbors, with roots all over the world. Then, while Ali was studying at University of California, Berkeley, 9/11 happened. Muslims replaced communists as America’s enemy #1, and he became an accidental spokesman and ambassador of all ordinary, unthreatening things Muslim-y.

Now a middle-aged dad, Ali has become one of the foremost and funniest public intellectuals in America. In Go Back to Where You Came From, he tackles the dangers of Islamophobia, white supremacy, and chocolate hummus, peppering personal stories with astute insights into national security, immigration, and pop culture. In this refreshingly bold, hopeful, and uproarious memoir, Ali offers indispensable lessons for cultivating a more compassionate, inclusive, and delicious America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324050322
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	01/24/2023
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	441,470
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Wajahat Ali is a New York Times-contributing writer, recovering attorney, and tired dad. His work has appeared in the Atlantic, New York Review of Books, and other outlets. He lives in Washington, DC.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Create Your Own Superhero Origin Story 15

Chapter 2 Say Hello to America's Oldest Friend 52

Chapter 3 Do Something Useful 60

Chapter 4 Be Moderate So America Will (Maybe) Love You (Conditionally) One Day (Inshallah) 81

Chapter 5 Die Hard in Amreeka 115

Chapter 6 Avoid Jail 129

Chapter 7 Become a Domestic Crusader 162

Chapter 8 Die Hard 2: Die Harder in Amreeka 181

Chapter 9 Elect a Muslim President, but Beware of Economic Anxiety 200

Chapter 10 Invest in Hope, but Tie Your Camel First 218

Acknowledgments 233

Notes for the Fellow Nerds 241

Editorial Reviews

"This is the book I’ve been hoping Wajahat Ali would write for ten years—hilarious, stylistically fearless, deeply humane."

Dave Eggers

"Wajahat Ali has already proven that he is the fastest mind on TV. Now his fans can sample his brilliance on the page."

Ishmael Reed

"Wajahat Ali brilliantly and lovingly unpacks the complicated history and urgent lived experience of being otherized in America.… [A] rich feast for all the senses—a must-read."

S. E. Cupp

"In prose at times hilarious and at other times deeply moving, Wajahat Ali chronicles a uniquely American experience. All will benefit from reading his story."

Representative Ilhan Omar

"With wit and charm, Ali has delivered a masterful meditation on growing up brown in America...An intoxicating rejection of cynicism in the face of existential threats to multiracial democracy, and a clear-eyed call to arms against the forces seeking to stop the expansion of American democracy. An affirmation of the country America could be."

New York Times - Mara Gay

"Full of wisdom and compassion, not to mention Ali’s signature humor. As educational as it is entertaining. I wish my nine-year-old immigrant self had this book when the playground kids were telling me to go back where I came from.”"

Gary Shteyngart

"A hilarious and heartwarming treatise on what it truly means to be American in the twenty-first century. You’ll be laughing so hard you won’t even notice the inevitable Islamic takeover of America! Oops, I’ve said too much."

Reza Aslan

11/08/2021

Ali (The Domestic Crusaders), a New York Times contributing writer, pairs searing humor with personal experiences to address xenophobia in America. The son of Pakistani immigrants, Ali grew up in California’s Bay Area and here repurposes the racist insults he’s weathered all his life (the book’s title being a common refrain) to convey difficult truths about America. He uses the term “THE WHITENESS” to refer to both blatant and subtle forms of racism, and humorously compares trying to confront bigotry in the U.S. to an episode of The Twilight Zone, in which a plane passenger tries to warn others the plane is being attacked by goblins, only to be taken away in a straitjacket. Elsewhere, Ali reflects on the life-altering moment the Twin Towers fell, his first “political awakening,” while he was in college, and describes the impact of the media’s portrayal of Muslims as angry terrorists while arguing that, conversely, the top domestic terror threat that needs to be addressed in America is white supremacy. To capture the gravity of his subject, he shares a conversation with his father, who felt compelled to research safe places outside the U.S. for Muslims to live if Trump won the 2020 election. Though Ali fears such a place may not exist, he chooses to “invest in hope” for a more inclusive America. This rousing reflection will encourage readers to do the same. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"This powerful and moving book is, at its heart, a love story. The beloved, flawed and tragic — so flawed, so tragic — is America. The lover's hope is always undermined. And yet his hope somehow endures."

Mohsin Hamid

"This book is a tour de force—equal parts tragedy and laugh-out-loud comedy. With brazen wit, rigorous analysis, and searing insight, Wajahat Ali speaks to the first-generation American’s dilemma of being both ‘us’ and ‘them.’"

Suleika Jaouad

"Wajahat Ali’s deeply personal and keenly perceptive memoir is a clear-eyed account of his American immigrant experience.… We are all fortunate to be on the receiving end of not only his intellect, but his humanity and heart."

Katie Couric

"A tender knife-sharp analysis of racism . . . personal, painful, familial, and global"

Juan Felipe Herrera

"Find a place on your bookshelf between Mark Twain and James Baldwin. Read this book before putting it there."

Timothy Snyder

"Ali mines the sheer comedic potential of being brown and Muslim in America and dissects the dynamics of bigotry in all its aspects, including Islamophobia and white nationalism. He captures the tragic realities of life in America, and lauds its potential wonders."

Carla Blank

"Raw, funny, honest, and most important, all-American"

Kim Ghattas

"Reveals the pain of loving a nation that doesn't always love you back."

Laila Lalami

"Wajahat Ali writes with effervescent verve, an easy wit, and a bracing moral clarity. This book made me laugh out loud, tear up, giggle, google recipes for Pakistani food, and think long and hard about what it means to be an American. Easily the most enjoyable book I’ve read in years."

journalist Julia Ioffe

"This book is—appropriately enough—Wajahat in book form: smart, hilarious, very into food, and deeply empathetic. He’s the very best of America, and this book can help you be too."

Franklin Leonard

"Timely and engrossing, balancing sharp satire and deep empathy, Wajahat Ali’s brilliant, hilarious, and eye-opening book will make any reader want to come to his block party."

Sunny Hostin

01/01/2022

Ali, a lawyer, columnist, and playwright (The Domestic Crusaders), discusses his childhood in the Bay Area as the son of Muslim immigrants from Pakistan. He initially presents the book as a tongue-in-cheek instructional manual for achieving the "Amreekan dream." Ali's father, Zulfiqar, arrived in San Francisco from Karachi in the 1960s; here Ali notes that Muslim immigrants from the Indian subcontinent are often assumed to be Arab, and he explains that this lack of cultural understanding with regard to the South Asian diaspora has persisted in the U.S. since the time of his father's arrival. His family settled in Fremont, CA, in the 1980s, where Ali came of age. He was a college student at Berkeley during 9/11, when the subsequent backlash against Muslim Americans spurred him to campus activism. Ali's tone—witty and self-deprecating, with a canny instinct for comedic timing—becomes incisive when he discusses the scapegoating of his Pakistani community and other Muslims. He is more guarded when relaying his parents' legal troubles, after they were accused of wire fraud. Ali writes that their plight disrupted his college years but also strengthened his resolve to find creative ways to advocate for Muslim Americans. VERDICT A compassionate and insightful memoir full of hope and humor; recommended for all collections.—Barrie Olmstead

Library Journal

2021-10-02
A Pakistani American journalist, playwright, and activist uses his personal history as a tool to analyze how America’s relationship with Muslims, immigrants, and people of color has developed since the 1980s.

Born to Pakistani parents, Ali grew up in a loving, multigenerational Muslim home in the Bay Area. The author’s idyllic life abruptly shifted when he was in college because of two earth-shattering events. The first was 9/11, which instantly transformed him into “an accidental activist, a global representative of 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide and a walking Wikipedia of 1,400 years of all things Islam.” During this time, Ali and his fellow Muslim Student Association board members organized a series of events designed to combat Islamophobia on campus—events that, unwittingly, kick-started Ali’s career in media. Soon after, Ali’s family suffered a more personal tragedy when his parents were incarcerated for their alleged role in a wire and mail fraud scheme—though they “had nothing to do with the piracy ring itself.” Ali credits the following two decades of struggle for his family’s politicization and his eventual career as a successful playwright and essayist focused on writing a new story for his unfairly maligned community. The author’s views on racism and Islamophobia are deeply researched, nuanced, and clear, and he is adept at weaving these ideas into his life story organically and without pretense. His conversational voice renders even the most complex concepts a pleasure to read. The only exception is the set of chapters on his family’s incarceration. Tonally, these read quite differently than the rest of the book, perhaps due to the highly emotional nature of the material. While Ali structures the chapters as a series of tips about how to be American, what truly unifies his story is his vulnerability in sharing some of the most intimate and painful moments of his life.

A Pakistani American memoir that shines with passion, intelligence, and humor.

Kirkus Reviews