Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America [Autobiographical]

A deeply personal exploration of the immigrant experience and what it means to be American, from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-nominated author of The Other Americans and The Moor’s Account.

In Conditional Citizens, Pulitzer Prize-finalist Laila Lalami recounts her unlikely journey from Moroccan immigrant to U.S. citizen, using her own story as a starting point for an exploration of the rights, liberties, and protections that are traditionally associated with American citizenship. She poignantly illustrates how white supremacy survives through adaptation and legislation, weaving together her experiences with an examination of the place of nonwhites in the broader American culture. Conditional citizens, she contends, are all the people whom America embraces with one arm and pushes away with the other. In this brilliantly argued and deeply personal work of nonfiction, Lalami taps into history, politics, and literature, and elucidates how accidents of birth—such as national origin, race, and gender—that once determined the boundaries of Americanness still cast their shadows today.

Publication History: Pantheon HC, September 2020

About the Author

LAILA LALAMI was born in Rabat and educated in Morocco, Great Britain, and the United States. She the author of four novels, including The Moor’s Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her most recent work, The Other Americans, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, Harper’s, The Guardian, and The New York Times. Lalami is a professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside. She lives in Los Angeles.

Author Residence: Los Angeles, CA

Author Hometown: Rabat, Morocco