A counternarrative to hate

This Is What American Looks Like: My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman

Ilhan Omar with Rebecca Paley

London: Hurst & Co., 2020

Pp. 275

Recently, the US House of Representatives has taken on a livelier, diverse face, largely due to the election of four young congresswomen of colour pushing a progressive, inclusive, pro-people agenda. They quickly elicited the ire of Donald Trump, who suggested that they go back to their own countries. The irony was that three of them were born in the US. “This Is What America Looks Like” is the memoir of the only one born overseas: Ilhan Omar, a naturalised US citizen, was born in Somalia and came to the US at the age of twelve. In this book she recounts her childhood in Mogadishu, four years in a refugee camp in Kenya after her family fled civil war, immigration to the US, her struggle to get a higher education, her involvement in community organising, then city politics in Minneapolis, state politics in Minnesota, and finally, her 2018 election as the first Somali American Muslim woman in the US Congress. 

Omar’s life has been tumultuous and sometimes harsh and heartbreaking, but she doesn’t plead for sympathy. Just as interesting as the eventful journey she traces is the development of her philosophy of life, which drove her into political action. It started when she was in primary school in Mogadishu, and learned to stand up for herself and fight if necessary. From an early age, she had zero tolerance for unfairness and bullying, and often came home from school with scratches from having stood up for herself or a weaker student. Later in Arlington, Virginia, she would fight in school again to preserve her dignity. The word, feisty, comes to mind, and she honed this quality as an adult, enabling her to withstand many attacks, whether from racist and Islamophobic figures or conservatives in her own community.

From her experience in the refugee camp, Omar developed empathy for human suffering and adopted her optimistic view on life: “Although we witnessed the worst of human nature… we also witnessed the best of it. The greatest lesson I came away with from my time in the refugee camp is that your today doesn’t get to determine your tomorrow.” (p. 48)

Although Omar’s mother died when she was very young, she never lacked for care at home. Growing up in an extended family, she had the special love and guidance of her father and grandfather, both of whom believed that boys and girls should be treated equally and avoided being authoritarian. “We were unlike a traditional hierarchical Somali family, where when the father or mother spoke no one else dared utter a word. Instead, everyone, even the youngest child, me, was brought into every decision.” (p. 9)

It may seem surprising that Omar thus had her earliest training in democracy — the cause she espouses so eloquently — in her Somali home, and later when her father took her to political caucuses in Minneapolis.

Twelve-year-old Omar’s first impressions of America were crucial. Arriving in New York, she was shocked to see piles of trash and desolate homeless people such as she had never seen in Somalia. Yet, again, seeing the negative served as a call to action: “I was looking for an escape from devastation into something wonderful… we had sacrificed and invested so much in this journey that I couldn’t accept inequality and suffering upon arrival — just a different kind. I was — and still am — in search of America as that more perfect place.” (pp. 66-67)

When she and her father relocated to Minnesota, the state which has the largest concentration of Somalis in the US, Omar finally had the chance to replace fighting with constructive engagement. In a very diverse, but dysfunctional high school in Minneapolis, she joined with other students to improve the racial and cultural relations among different groups, founding a coalition called Unity in Diversity, which succeeded.

Omar is very frank about her personal life — her difficulties as a teenager, a young mother, her marriages and personal crises. She is equally persuasive about her political commitment, which began while teaching a nutrition class to new immigrants and realising that none of them had the means to implement the healthy choices she was advocating. This led her into public policy and the issues she has continued to champion ever since — equal access to education, employment, healthcare, nutrition, voting, as well as fighting for income equality, criminal justice reform, environmental protection and support for new Americans. She succeeded in being elected to office by virtue of incredibly hard work, coalition-building and detailed knowledge of the issues involved. Whether running locally or nationally, her political strategy has been based on face-to-face encounters and knowing the details of her constituents’ lives. Her presence in the US Congress became a counternarrative to the message of hate broadcast by Trump and his policies. 

The sparkling prose and energy in this book are contagious. One learns a lot about Somali culture — not the folkloric kind, but how families and communities function. Omar also compellingly explains what her Muslim faith and wearing the hijab mean to her. In the last chapter she outlines her vision for America and how to get there. This book will upend your perceptions of Somalia and America.