The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America

by Nikesh Shukla

I learned very early that to be an immigrant in this country meant I didn’t have the luxury of choosing what I wanted, only what was necessary.

To be examined that way—not as a foreigner, a piece of ass, or a trophy, but as a whole person—was exactly what I needed.

Constantly negotiating your difference as a person of color means you are always explaining and excusing the plurality that holds you together, as much as it threatens to split you apart.

People of color learn early to take responsibility for creating their own spaces and their own safety, whether that means choosing a university in a “diverse” area or simply looking for another person of color in the room.

My first coming of age was learning the rules. The second was breaking them.

no oppressed person finds joy in addressing the very thing that stymied his or her fullest potential.

Maybe that’s the true American Dream, not gold- or cheese-paved streets. Maybe we all just dream of what it would be like to live in America, allowed to just be.

A nation who should not be white at all yet sees only through the lens of whiteness.

America, it seems, has been victim to, and terrorized by, its own ignorance.

The United States has no official language, but over and over, language plays a central role in discussions about our national cultural identity. With words, laws, and petty insults, the various encampments struggle over language like missionaries and martyrs at the gates of a holy city.

“I will not let this change me, Fatima, change how I think. I will not resign my fate to feeling unwelcome here. I will still wave at my neighbors.”