Americanized: Rebel without a Green Card

Sara Saedi is the author and protagonist of the memoir Americanized. Born in 1982 in Iran, Sara immigrates to the United States with her family when she is two years old. Sara writes about her experiences growing up as an undocumented immigrant in California. It takes her 18 years to receive her green card and another five to become a naturalized American citizen, which occurs when she is 26 years old.

Throughout the memoir, Saedi is torn by her two concurrent realities: undocumented immigrant and American teenager. Separately, these are tales of the everyman (or rather, everywoman); together, Sara’s story is one of contradiction and complexity. While it is not a tidy story, it is one with which every immigrant, and most people in general, can relate. Saedi does not fall into one definition or another; she is a series of “boths” and “alls,” just like all of us. By pointing toward both modern and historical political circumstances, such as the presidency of Donald Trump, Saedi points out that this complexity of identity is often overlooked, and it’s integral to acknowledge it in order to establish compassionate and effective policy.