Go Back to Where You Came From was a great listen! The audiobook format was a great way to engage with Ali's story.

Wajahat Ali’s memoir will find a cherished community of readers in fans of Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime. Ali’s narrative is insightful, humorous, witty, and full of heart. That Ali narrates his memoir in audiobook form is a huge win for readers, as readers will feel as though he is sharing stories from his life with them a deeply personal way.

Wajahat Ali does a good job of coating the difficulties of his past with humour. This book was more personal than I expected from the title. Less of a spoof on self-help to tackle issue of race than a reflection on his own upbringing and the added difficulties of prejudice in many forms. Read by Wajahat himself the audio performance was engaging and animated. I would recommend this to anyone who is a fan of memoirs in general but specifically thos that tackle race, religion and cultural topics.

This was such an engrossing book - informative, funny, and emotional at times. I had never heard of the author before but am looking forward to reading more of his work.

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.cdf

Go back to where you came from blends a personal memoir with polemic against current narratives of the political right. The narration was entertaining and the personal accounts offered a real personal perspective of the author. The books shifts in tone quite a bit, which put me off sometimes. It felt as though the author wanted it to be both an entertaining polemic as well as a sincere memoir at the same time and I am unsure this was achieved. Nevertheless, it offered a unique perspective that I had not encountered before and I am glad to have a received a copy and gotten to read it!

Thank you Mr. Ali and Netgalley for the free ARC copy. This is my first nonfiction Muslim book and the first time I listened/read about Wajahat Ali. This is the first audiobook that made me cry. I do not live in the US but as a Southeast Asian woman, I also live his life. Our cultures has a lot of similarities and his story is very relatable. I cried because his story is sad and real. I do hope wherever Mr. Ali is now is that he is doing well as well his family. I hope he continue writing because this is gold.

Wajahat Ali is many things: a journalist, a playwright, a lawyer, a Muslim, a dad, a fantastic son (and an only child), and so much more. To say he’s been through the wringer is a bit of an understatement - Wajahat has faced a ton of struggles in his life.

And yet, this book is overwhelmingly funny, lighthearted, and inspiring. He’s found a way - if not at the time of these struggles, then now - to find humor in these situations, to get the reader to relate to his life, and to see the brightness at the end of the tunnel - to be grateful for the fact that he’s still here, and not take this life for granted.

He writes not only about his own life and tribulations, but about difficult issues of racism, Islamophobia, mental health, colonialism, and inequality. His life is interesting enough as it is - partially because of what he calls his family curse. Wajahat is the son of two Pakistani Muslim immigrants who came to the US in the late sixties to live their “Amreekan” dream. Wajahat was their only son, growing up relatively stable and well-off in Fremont, California. But he also grew up as a Muslim kid after 9/11, and experienced the fallout of America’s racism and xenophobia both firsthand and through his friends - he was a fat, nerdy brown boy who was bullied and isolated for a variety of reasons. Oh, and he had quite a few near death experiences as a kid, too.

As he got older, his struggles only increased. When he was in college, both his parents were arrested by the FBI for alleged piracy, a lawsuit brought on by Microsoft. Whether they were guilty or not, this started a ten-year-long saga of basically, the “Amreekan” nightmare for Wajahat - overnight, he went from a college student not sure what law school he should choose to needing to assume his family’s business, all the financial burdens of lawyers, mortgage, employees, etc., the care of his grandmothers, and almost-most devastatingly, the shame and attention of community gossip. For TEN YEARS. This experience alone gave him OCD, some form of PTSD, and probably a heart arrhythmia too.

I won’t even go in depth on some of the other highlights of this book - a whole chapter (and more) on the elusive maybe-myth of the Moderate Muslim, a childhood of being left handed and wearing husky pants, the saga of writing his play The Domestic Crusaders and turning it into reality, his wife and children, oh so much more. You’ll just have to read the book and enjoy his mostly poignant, but always funny, stories.

As an aside, one thing I loved about this book is his unwillingness to shy away from using his own language, sayings, terms, and nicknames to describe people and things. For example, when describing his family curse, he talks about and consistently refers back to the term nazar, or the evil eye. He calls one of his grandmothers his Dhadi - instead of just saying grandmother. He’s not trying to reshape his vocabulary for a white audience, he’s telling his story authentically, and educating his reader at the same time. It’s a little thing, but that stood out to me.

Overall, this was a book that will certainly give you a worthwhile perspective on many pressing issues of our time - but it’s also a fascinating, funny, and compelling memoir of a very interesting, resilient guy. Thank you to RB Media for the audio ARC via Netgalley!

*received for free from netgalley for honest review* great book! i laughed out loud so many times! very accurate account of being not White in america, will probably get this book for my dad!

The author expertly mixes wit and wisdom to make this a very fun and enjoyable read. The first-hand experiences of the author help to really bring to life the struggles of those who our society continues to see as outsiders, no matter how long they've been here.

In <i>Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American</i>, Wajahat Ali recounts his experiences with racism as a Pakistani-American born in California. He did a great job balancing his personal experiences, the (lack of) cultural representation he saw growing up in pre-9/11 America and the representation in the media ever since, and the political.

I love that we got to hear Ali narrate his own book in the audiobook format. His wit and humor add some levity to what could have been a heavy, depressing book. I definitely recommend checking out this book in its audiobook format!

Many thanks to NetGalley for providing me an audio ARC of this book.

Unfortunately due to having Covid I missed this title before it was archived.. I had been really looking forward to reading it, and can only apologise to NetGalley and the author.

I remember watching Wajahat Ali as a guest either on CNN or MSNBC a couple of times and liked what he had to say but didn’t know anything else about him. Later on, I did follow his little daughter’s fight with liver cancer on his social media and it was heartbreaking to see his family deal with it all while also raising awareness about cancer, the treatment process and the expensive healthcare system in the country. So, when I saw this audiobook available as an arc on netgalley, I knew I had to pick it up.

Right from the first page, you know the one constant in this book is going to be the humor. He starts the book listing off some of the vile hate mail he has received, but narrates in such a dramatic style that you are horrified but can’t stop laughing either. And that kind of dichotomy persists throughout. He is adept at weaving the personal and political, connecting each aspect of his Pakistani-American life with the larger narrative about being from a brown Muslim immigrant family in America. He doesn’t shy away from talking about many tricky topics, especially the colorism, anti Blackness, fatphobia and repression of mental health issues in the overall South Asian community and how all this has deep personal as well as political implications for the everyone who is part of the community. Even though I grew up in India and he is a Pakistani-American and both of us have very different backgrounds, I found his growing up experience very relatable, especially with regards to the skin color and weight - I may live in the states now but the fat shaming and talks about my bad dark skin tone never stop. I also absolutely loved how liberal he is with the use of Urdu words and even the way he tells his story is all very very inherently desi and I was very engrossed throughout.

I don’t think I would have been able to finish this book without all his humor though. Because the author’s life hasn’t been easy. From being a relatively privileged and sheltered kid to multiple life threatening experiences, incarceration of his parents and being abandoned by many people he thought were family friends, multiple bankruptcies before turning 30 and coming of age as a young Muslim activist in the aftermath of 9/11, his life story is full of challenges and obstacles and this memoir is a tale of resilience in the face of adversities. It’s also a story of the deeply loving family and how they overcome all their troubles together, never losing hope, trying to use their experiences for the betterment of others.

Overall, this was a spectacularly narrated memoir by the author Wajahat himself who uses his signature humor, very dramatic but excellent storytelling skills and his amazing writing talents to tell a story which is at once personal and political, which is true for every single brown immigrant and Muslim person living the reality of America. The book may start with hate mail and get cynical in between at times, but he ends it with hope - hope he feels we need to invest in because despite feeling masochistic sometimes, hope is what we need if we ever want to truly fulfill what encompasses as the Amreekan dream. I would highly highly recommend the audiobook because I don’t think just reading it will give you the full experience of this book.

Wajahat Ali uses nuance, humor, and vulnerability to explore the push and pull of xenophobia and acceptance in America. As he states in this debut, “Everything is conditional in America, even the right to the American dream.” He expertly tackles the model minority myth, meaningful representation of desi and Muslim people in media, homelessness, parental incarceration, colorism, and managing his personal and family’s mental and physical health. This book serves as a reminder of our common humanity and interconnectedness and encourages more people to tell their stories.

Books like this, that weave together humor, history, and personal narratives are my favorites to read and help me consider another perspective when looking at complex issues. An example of another book that does this is How to Be Black by Baratunde Thurston.

Also highly recommend Ali’s New York Times essay, ‘How to Teach a Little Girl to Love Her Brown Skin’. His writing is affecting and relatable and necessary.

I really loved this! I knew just a little about Ali‘s work and personal story, so it was cool to learn about the depth and complexity of both - many serious ups and downs in his fortyish years! His analysis of and hope for America are wonderful, his writing is excellent, and he‘s really funny. I laughed out loud quite often. Also enjoyed his casual and conversational audiobook narration. Thanks to #NetGalley for early access to this one!

I always gravitate towards books written about other people’s experiences to assimilate and grow up as the first generation in the US and it’s amazing to find, despite different backgrounds, how similar our experiences are. It’s not easy to feel like you belong when you don’t look like everyone else. I was extremely lucky to attend an international school and was surrounded by many children going through the same thing I was. Wajahat Ali did not have the same luxury and it’s through his memories, often humorous, always honest and thought-provoking, that we see the experiences that shaped the man he is today. There are some difficult to hear passages but it’s definitely worth picking up for his take on the American dream.

In this memoir of sorts, the author confronts bias using humor as a vehicle. I enjoyed the author’s narration of the book, but the unrelenting comedy didn’t really hit for me, although he made lots of strong points in his humorous reframing.