GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM

A Pakistani American journalist, playwright, and activist uses his personal history as a tool to analyze how America’s relationship with Muslims, immigrants, and people of color has developed since the 1980s.

Born to Pakistani parents, Ali grew up in a loving, multigenerational Muslim home in the Bay Area. The author’s idyllic life abruptly shifted when he was in college because of two earth-shattering events. The first was 9/11, which instantly transformed him into “an accidental activist, a global representative of 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide and a walking Wikipedia of 1,400 years of all things Islam.” During this time, Ali and his fellow Muslim Student Association board members organized a series of events designed to combat Islamophobia on campus—events that, unwittingly, kick-started Ali’s career in media. Soon after, Ali’s family suffered a more personal tragedy when his parents were incarcerated for their alleged role in a wire and mail fraud scheme—though they “had nothing to do with the piracy ring itself.” Ali credits the following two decades of struggle for his family’s politicization and his eventual career as a successful playwright and essayist focused on writing a new story for his unfairly maligned community. The author’s views on racism and Islamophobia are deeply researched, nuanced, and clear, and he is adept at weaving these ideas into his life story organically and without pretense. His conversational voice renders even the most complex concepts a pleasure to read. The only exception is the set of chapters on his family’s incarceration. Tonally, these read quite differently than the rest of the book, perhaps due to the highly emotional nature of the material. While Ali structures the chapters as a series of tips about how to be American, what truly unifies his story is his vulnerability in sharing some of the most intimate and painful moments of his life.

A Pakistani American memoir that shines with passion, intelligence, and humor.