96 pages • 3 hours read
Sara SaediAmericanized: Rebel without a Green Card
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | YA | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Humor as a Narrative Device
Throughout the book, Saedi uses humor to tell her story as an undocumented immigrant. Saedi explicitly explains that her choice to use humor is intentional and, in many respects, unavoidable as her memoir is based on diary entries she wrote as a teenager. The narrative style of the book thus adopts two perspectives. The first is the perspective of Saedi as a teenager who, caught in the throes of hormonal angst, reveals her innermost thoughts and feelings. The second is a more analytical perspective that pairs the unfiltered thoughts and feelings of teenage Saedi with sociological insights gleaned through adulthood and hindsight. In both cases, Saedi uses humor as a narrative device.
From the opening pages of Americanized, Saedi adopts a comedic tone and writes:
I, for one, don’t miss 1993. That was the year I naively thought my biggest problems were my underdeveloped breasts, the cystic acne that had built a small colony on my chin, and the sad fact that my prettier best friend and I had set our sights on the same guy. Would our friendship fall apart over a boy? Would I ever outgrow my training bra? Would my skin ever clear up? These were the dilemmas that kept me up at night. I thought there was no way my life could get worse. But I was wrong (1).
Saedi sustains this droll tone throughout the book, particularly when she experiences situations that are embarrassing or painful. For instance, in Chapter 3, “Sporting the Frida Kahlo,” Saedi describes the humiliation she feels when her classmates tease her about her eyebrows:
I went home that day and examined my eyebrows in the mirror. Good God, they were awful. I took another look at my school portrait and discovered that I looked like I had a hungry, fuzzy caterpillar sprawled across my face. That’s when I had an epiphany: when my mom and aunts praised me for being hairless… they meant by Persian woman standards. I was still hairy by everyone else’s standards (44).
The humor, in this case, underscores the pain of not conforming to American cultural norms of beauty and being ostracized by her classmates because of it. It is regarding her more “American” experiences such as these that Saedi is most able to deploy humor because these were trivial, entirely surmountable obstacles.
Saedi’s humorous insights extend to her family’s immigration story as well, which she describes as a “comedy of errors” (author’s note). Still, the humor does not cancel out the anxiety and fear her family routinely experiences as undocumented immigrants. For instance, when describing her parent’s divorce, Saedi initially puts a light spin on it and writes, “I would like to let the record show that Ali and Shohreh probably had the most amicable divorce in the history of divorces. Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin had nothing on them” (181). Saedi does not maintain this cavalier attitude, though, and later writes, “It’ll never sit well that years later [my mother] had to end her happy, hard-earned marriage just to give her children a better life” (182).
In the author’s note, Saedi acknowledges her memoir can be funny because it has a happy ending. Her family members receive green cards and become naturalized American citizens. Yet, as she writes, “The same is not true for every person who’s trying to become a permanent resident or citizen of this country,” and she urges, “Please keep them in your hearts as your read my book” (author’s note). Ultimately, Saedi recognizes the seriousness of her subject matter and that she has the privilege of using humor to narrate her family’s immigration story.
The Power of Family Support
A consistent theme in Americanized is the support Saedi receives from her family and her immense love and respect for them. In separate chapters, she addresses her relationships with her father, mother, sister, and brother, as they are all integral to her happiness and understanding of herself. Saedi also addresses the importance of her wider network of kin, particularly the influences of her grandmothers and cousins. The stability and support of Saedi’s family is a powerful antidote to the precariousness of her legal right to reside in the United States.
Saedi often summarizes her love and appreciation for her family in the concluding points of her chapters, thus leaving the reader with a lasting impression of her admiration for them. For example, in Chapter 2, Saedi describes the sadness she feels when Samira leaves for college:
I turned into a complete puddle. And she cried, too. Because that’s what happens when you feel that connected to someone. They laugh and you laugh. You cry and they cry. More than twenty years later, my sister still has the same effect on me. She lives in Northern California with her family, and I live in Los Angeles with mine… but if it were up to me, we’d take a page from my mom and aunt’s book and live next door to each other (36).
Similarly, in Chapter 7, Saedi writes about her brother:
Years later, after I’d settled in Los Angeles, Kia enrolled as an undergrad at UCLA, and we picked up where we left off. With me as the worried mother figure who consoled him over bad breakups, and him as the sensitive kid who listened and supported me through my meltdowns (124).
Saedi’s parting description of her parents, written as a diary entry in Chapter 4, conveys similar sentiments: “I’m so thankful for my family. I’m so unbelievably lucky. It would be a blessing for me to grow up and become like my parents” (73).
Nonetheless, Saedi acknowledges difficult moments in her familial relationships. As a young child, she fights constantly with Samira, and despite her nurturing attitude toward Kia, she resents looking after him all the time. Saedi also expresses typical teenage frustrations with her parents, like their inability to fully accept her fashion choices and their insensitive remarks about her facial acne. However, these frustrations are minor compared to the fight that Saedi has with them over her immigration paperwork. In the end, they resolve their differences, but its effect on Saedi’s emotional state is clear in the diary entry she writes directly afterwards:
I tried to keep busy, but I kept crying. I fell asleep for an hour. But I thought I was going to puke. I tried to barf in the bathroom, but it didn’t work. It was so awful. I talked to my parents and things are good now, but that day really messed up my way of thinking about things. I think my parents are miserable […] I don’t trust my parents as much as I used to (241).
Saedi attributes her fight with her parents to years of stress and fear of living as undocumented immigrants. Ironically, she cites these as reasons for her family’s closeness, as well: “‘We’re all we have,’ my parents would remind us. ‘Our family is the most important thing in life. Never forget that’” (150). In a context of extreme uncertainty, they depend on one another for support. Saedi’s identity as an immigrant shapes her relationships with her cousins, too, creating a unique bond between them:
None of our friends knew what it was like to be raised by Iranian immigrants. None of our friends knew what it was like to be an immigrant. No one else understood the intricacies of our family and what our parents had to overcome just so we could live in America. The struggle was real, and it bonded us forever (151).
Thus, when asked about the one thing readers should know about Americanized, Saedi responds, “It’s a love letter to my family” (288). It is indeed a love letter to her family and, in Saedi’s words, to “all immigrants and Dreamers” who are experiencing similar challenges and struggles (288).
Political Activism and Resisting Oppression
Saedi’s political activism is a theme that gains salience as the book progresses, culminating in the final chapters. As a teenager, Saedi primarily fixates on her interpersonal relationships and appearance, although her anxiety about her undocumented status shapes some awareness about broader societal inequalities and injustices. However, it is difficult for her to articulate these inequities or recognize their systemic, structural underpinnings until she is older. Likewise, Saedi’s recognition of gender oppression and Islamophobia are themes that develop with her narratives of her grandmothers and again gain traction as Saedi matures and becomes more self-aware of her familial history. By the end of the book, these themes coalesce in Saedi’s inserts, “Frequently Asked Question #7: I’m undocumented and I’m scared. Any words of advice?” and “Your Undocumented Immigrant Refresher Course,” which make the connections between racism, sexism, and xenophobia explicit and highlight the importance of community activism and empathy to create a more tolerant and inclusive society.
As a teenager, Saedi is fully aware that her undocumented status in the United States makes her different from her peers and keeps it a carefully guarded secret. However, other aspects of her identity, like her Middle Eastern heritage, are visible. For example, when renewing her Iranian passport, Saedi is mortified that a classmate sees her wearing a headscarf. Looking back on the incident and contextualizing it within the context of growing sentiments of Islamophobia in America, Saedi no longer feels embarrassed and instead writes, “The Muslims I knew didn’t have to be afraid to be seen in public wearing the hijab the way they are today. If I had to do it all over again, I would have proudly ignored the confused glances from the popular girl from school” (118). Saedi’s retrospective awareness is evident in another incident when a classmate teases her for having a pimple on the middle of her forehead. Displaying his insensitivity and ignorance, he shouts, “Hey, Sara! Do you worship Gandhi?” making a reference to the bindi that Hindus wear. Sara writes, “I wish I’d shouted back that I did worship Gandhi, because he was a powerful historical figure who helped free India from British rule. I could have yelled back that Hindu culture was beautiful and that samosas were freaking delicious. But instead, I burst into tears” (130). Sara’s political consciousness is undeveloped as a teenager, but as an adult she transforms these incidents into moments of reflection that allow her to speak out against hurtful comments and bigotry via her book.
Saedi’s discussion of gender norms in Iran is another theme that develops as she matures and pieces together the life histories of her grandmothers. Saedi notes the societal limitations that women experience in Iran yet also reflects on her grandmothers’ capacity for independence and openness to other ways of living. This is most evident in the unconventional choices of Maman Soury, who defies her relatives and divorces her husband to marry his nephew. Saedi’s portrayal of her mother, Shohreh, similarly counters American stereotypes of Middle Eastern women as passive or submissive. Although Shohreh marries young, she bravely leaves Iran with her young daughters without knowing what to expect in the United States or even if her husband can join her. Shohreh also encourages Saedi to not settle for anyone who does not love her, a form of female choice and empowerment that Saedi gratefully accepts as a young adult.
Nonetheless, it is in 2016, with the presidential election of Donald Trump, that Saedi fully develops her political consciousness and becomes more committed to community activism. She describes the impact of Trump’s election on her psyche:
As a female, a minority, and an immigrant, I felt lost […] I know parts of the country relate to me about as much as I relate to them, but I had mistakenly thought that even if our lives were undeniably different, we were still connected by our humanity. And that, ultimately, our morals would prevent us from electing someone who promoted racism and misogyny and xenophobia (256-57).
Saedi wrote Americanized following the election of Trump with the intention that it might serve as a counter-narrative to right-wing rhetoric that misrepresented immigrants and Middle Easterners as “the scary ‘other’” (285). As such, Americanized has an overtly political agenda. Saedi offers advice for immigrants, emphasizing their rights and what do if threatened with deportation. She also encourages readers to oppose societal injustices by protesting and supporting advocacy work. Perhaps most importantly, in sharing her family’s story, Saedi humanizes the struggles of immigrants, presenting opportunities to not only better understand but also empathize with some of America’s most marginalized populations.
