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May. 20th, 2009 10:38 amTram Nguyen's We Are All Suspects Now: Untold Stories from Immigrant Communities After 9/11 uses a series of individual accounts and interviews to show how the government has been using the rhetoric of terrorism to crack down on immigrants and immigrant communities in the US since 9/11, detaining 'suspects' in inhumane conditions and pushing through record numbers of deportations without providing hearings or access to lawyers.
Nguyen uses a wide range of examples to make her point: measures such as deportations, the refusal of asylum, and racial profiling are taken in the name of 'safety' but provide for a large segment of the population the exact opposite. In the abstract I knew this already; it's still often a gutpunch to see it in the specific. She also really emphasizes how this affects not just individuals, but whole communities of people.
There are ways in which I wish the book was stronger. I am pretty sure there are a couple of places when she idealizes the lives of her interviewees pre-9/11 in order to make her point about the changes afterwards and what they are losing. I also really really wish she'd distributed some of the meat that she saves for her (very strong) conclusion throughout the rest of the book, as there are times before that when, I think, she assumes an ideal reader who has read up on the problems of current American immigration policies and agrees with her opinions on it already. As someone who generally does agree with her, I wish she hadn't done that - it bothered me on occasion, and I think it's likely to distract from some of her really important points for people who agree with her less.
But that doesn't mean that I don't recommend the book, or think it was a disturbing and important read, because I absolutely do.
Nguyen uses a wide range of examples to make her point: measures such as deportations, the refusal of asylum, and racial profiling are taken in the name of 'safety' but provide for a large segment of the population the exact opposite. In the abstract I knew this already; it's still often a gutpunch to see it in the specific. She also really emphasizes how this affects not just individuals, but whole communities of people.
There are ways in which I wish the book was stronger. I am pretty sure there are a couple of places when she idealizes the lives of her interviewees pre-9/11 in order to make her point about the changes afterwards and what they are losing. I also really really wish she'd distributed some of the meat that she saves for her (very strong) conclusion throughout the rest of the book, as there are times before that when, I think, she assumes an ideal reader who has read up on the problems of current American immigration policies and agrees with her opinions on it already. As someone who generally does agree with her, I wish she hadn't done that - it bothered me on occasion, and I think it's likely to distract from some of her really important points for people who agree with her less.
But that doesn't mean that I don't recommend the book, or think it was a disturbing and important read, because I absolutely do.
