Friends Author Series, in Partnership with the Mayor's Multicultural Council, Presents An Evening with Roya Hakakian, Author of A Beginner’s Guide to America

A  Beginner’s Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious is written as a guide for the newly arrived, providing practical information and advice that reveals a portrait of what the new immigrant experience in America is really like.

Roya Hakakian, an immigrant herself, captures the texture of life in a new place in all its complexity, laying bare both its beauty and its darkness as she discusses race, sex, love, death, consumerism, and what it is like to be from a country that is in America's crosshairs.

Her perceptive and surprisingly humorous account invites us to see ourselves as we appear to others, making it possible for us to rediscover our many American gifts through the perspective of the outsider. In shattering myths and embracing painful contradictions that are unique to this place, A Beginner's Guide to America is Hakakian's candid love letter to America.

Roya Hakakian is the author of Assassins of the Turquoise Palace and Journey from the Land of No, and has published two collections of poetry in Persian. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and on NPR's All Things Considered. She has collaborated on programming for leading journalism units in network television, including 60 Minutes. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and served on the editorial board of World Affairs.

Book sale and signing to follow.

Registration required to attend in person.

Note: Proof of COVID vaccination or a negative COVID test within 72 hours is required to attend library programs in the Main Library auditorium.

Also available via Zoom; join the webinar at the scheduled time.

Presented in partnership with the Mayor’s Multicultural Council.