The Good Immigrant is a collection of twenty-six essays by first and second-generation immigrants about what it is like living and producing their art in a country torn apart by racism and xenophobia. It is a collection of essays by people whose lives are directly affected by Donald Trump’s racism, white nationalism, and hate-inspired policies.

What does it feel like to tour the U.S. in a band when you’re all Muslim? What does it feel like to always be the “other”? That are only the surface questions that come up while reading The Good Immigrant. But this collection is not so obvious as that. There are stories such as “Sidra” by Rahawa Haile of the heartbreaking family fractures that can happen. Families fall apart and fathers disappear in immigrant and non-immigrant families, but the questions of why can be very different. I loved Teju Cole’s essay, “The Blackness of the Panther” which takes a contrarian view of the famed film. Chimene Suleyman’s “On Being Kim Kardashian” was thought-provoking, a consideration of the ambiguity of some immigrant identities. Yann Mounir Demange’s “The Long Answer” considers a different kind of ambiguity.

Some essays are very direct, like a memoir. Others are more oblique, written from an angle that demands we think more deeply in order to understand. Some are written simply and others are more complex, but while the approach varies, the theme of being a step outside the main remains constant.

In 2016, a similar collection of the same name was released as an effort to amplify diverse voices. But then Brexit happened, and the idea of “The Good Immigrant” became an urgent counter-argument to the xenophobic narratives of bad immigrants and white nationalism and isolationism. The toxic strains that led to the U.K.’s disastrous Brexit vote are spreading worldwide and helped elect Donald Trump. It is a gift to us, that Nikesh Shukla recruited Chimene Suleyman, a contributor to the 2016 book who now lives in the U.S. to join him in producing this 2019 collection of immigrants to the U.S.

I received a copy of The Good Immigrant from the publisher through NetGalley.