THE GOOD IMMIGRANT

Immigrants offer affecting personal essays about adapting to
daily life in the United States while also retaining their identities forged by
foreign cultures.

In 2015, editors Shukla (The One Who Wrote Destiny, 2018,
etc.) and Suleyman (Outside Looking On, 2014) published a similar book
in the U.K. Suleyman has since relocated to New York City and taken charge of
this current collection, the title of which plays on the toxic assumption that
all immigrants should be perceived as “bad” until they demonstrate otherwise.
The editors do not explain how they decided on the order of the essays, but
many readers will agree that the first, Porochista Khakpour’s “How to Write
Iranian-America, or the Last Essay,” qualifies as both the most inventively
written and most memorable. Besides Iran, the other nations in the anthology
are spread across the world, from Africa to Asia to Europe to Latin America.
The contributors also explore topics around the generalized immigration
experiences of both Muslims and Jews. Because some of the essays are ripped
from the headlines, Donald Trump’s xenophobia and immigration-related presidential
policies figure in, as well. In fact, the fear spawned by the hatred of Trump
and the Republican Party is palpable throughout. In that context, “Return to
Macondo,” by Puerto Rican writer Susanne Ramírez de Arellano, offers the
especially poignant—and angry—perspective of a marginalized woman who “never
bought the American Dream. It was a visceral reaction. This dream always had
the rank smell of bullshit to me. I didn’t believe it, no matter what new
toothpaste or amazing trip to the moon they were selling.” The author
biographies at the back of the book will help readers find talented immigrant
authors previously unknown to them; some of the more well-known contributors
include Khakpour, Alexander Chee, Daniel José Elder, Teju Cole, and Nicole
Dennis-Benn.

As in nearly all collections, the quality varies, but there are
no weak links in this well-curated book.