Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America

Conditional Citizens is a collection of essays from writer, professor, and linguist Laila Lalami. Published in 2020 by Pantheon Books, Lalami’s collection is a New York Times Editors’ Choice, was a finalist for the California Book Award, was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, and was awarded Best Book of the Year by Time, NPR, BookPage, and the Los Angeles Times.

In this work, Lalami discusses what it means to be an American citizen, using her own experiences as a foundation for a discussion on immigration, gender, race, and religion. Weaving together elements of memoir and rhetorical essays, the collection explores US history, government policy, and interpersonal relationships and interactions through the lens of citizenship. Lalami weighs the various conditions that are imposed upon immigrants, women, religious minorities, and people of color, despite their holding the same official status in the US. In each essay, Lalami tackles a different aspect of citizenship, discussing loyalty, treatment under the law, and the ways that people of different backgrounds interact with one another. The work discusses the shortcomings of US citizenship, often paired with contrasts against an ideal model of citizenship or more rigid structures, such as those of Lalami’s native Morocco.

This summary uses the first edition Pantheon Books version of the text.

Content Warning: The source material features discussions of discrimination, terrorism, hate crimes, and sexual assault.

Plot Summary

The text includes eight essays, each addressing the issue of citizenship from a different angle. Though the essays build on one another as the work progresses, the individual essays can be taken as independent works, with the exception of the final essay, “Do Not Despair of This Country,” which serves as a conclusion to the collection overall. Throughout the work, Lalami introduces both factual and anecdotal evidence, forging connections between her own life and the realities of citizenship in the US.

The first essay, “Allegiance,” focuses on the idea of loyalty to an American ideal. It covers the reasons for Lalami’s decision to become a citizen and her struggles since that time. This essay also broadly discusses issues that become main topics of later essays, such as religion, race, gender, and immigration, centering on the way each of these issues impacts whether one is considered “American.” This essay opens the collection by demonstrating that citizenship status does not necessarily determine how one experiences life in America.

“Faith” focuses on the specific stresses of being a Muslim American. This essay incorporates elements from Lalami’s childhood in Morocco, a predominantly Muslim country, and examines the practice of viewing individual members of a group as its representatives. The distinction between faith and religion is used to explain further the idea of a “gray area” in which one belongs to neither of the extreme characterizations applied to Muslim Americans. Though America demands total allegiance, it becomes impossible to be perceived as maintaining that allegiance without constant rejection of Islam.

In “Borders,” Lalami discusses both the physical borders that separate countries, with emphasis on the border between the US and Mexico, and the conceptual borders between groups of people. Citing harmful rhetoric from the Trump administration, as well as Supreme Court rulings regarding racial profiling, Lalami reveals that discussions of immigration often rely on a process of identifying what it means to be American by slandering what it means to be not-American. The issues of border patrol and the infringement of rights in the name of security are also explored as potential problems for all Americans.

In “Assimilation,” Lalami addresses the double standard of the expectations that are placed on immigrants in America, which often require that immigrants forsake their native cultures entirely in favor of a new “American” identity that is largely white, Christian, and European in nature. Discrimination against immigrants involves the accusation that they fail to assimilate, but the process of assimilation itself is shown to change and shift both over time and between different groups.

“Tribe” digs into issues of race in America and on a global stage, discussing whiteness as a default category in discussions of race and pointing to the lack of racial discussions on whiteness as a problem for white people moving forward. Lalami weaves together discussions of oppression and power structures, discussing race as both a social construct and a legal and political tool. Lalami identifies the ways that privilege functions more as the absence of concerns than as explicit advantages, and intersectionality complicates the process of identifying the ways in which each person experiences privilege.

In “Caste,” Lalami explores the issues surrounding and resulting from class in America, specifically the issue of welfare and social assistance programs for poor Americans. Highlighting the American view that poverty is a choice, an attitude that Lalami calls uniquely American, she reviews the history of providing—and then restricting—welfare programs and voting rights for poor groups in America. As a result, divisions within poor communities and public disapproval for government assistance continue to damage the efficacy of these groups, necessitating a change in the way poverty is discussed and handled in the future.

For “Inheritance,” Lalami uses her own experiences, as well as those of Christine Blasey Ford, Anita Hill, and other women, to demonstrate the ways in which women are held as secondary citizens in America and around the world. Drawing parallels between literature, everyday life, and the proceedings to determine whether Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas would become Supreme Court justices, Lalami shows that assumptions of dishonesty and incompetence regularly prevent women from enjoying the full rights of citizenship. She connects the monarchy of Morocco and the democracy of the US, as women are mistreated in this way under both governments.

Finally, “Do Not Despair of This Country” concludes the collection by looking forward at what citizenship can and should be. Lalami reviews the issues presented in the collection, but she also takes a step further to outline what it would mean to truly be a citizen and receive the full liberties and rights of that title. The essay also includes calls to action, urging readers to get involved in local and national efforts to improve equality for all Americans and to develop a greater understanding of America’s impact on other nations.