The Complicated Journey of Becoming an American

Let us start with your experience as an Iraqi immigrant to the United States. What did you mean when you wrote: “I have found assimilation to be more of a revolution than an adaptation”? What has the process been like in defining your identity?

There is evolution and revolution. Every transplant to new soil undergoes one of the two. Evolution is adapting to a new environment to survive and possibly flourish. Revolution is rejecting the old for the sake of the new; destroying the old to create the new.

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