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provide booktv to viewers. >> hello. i am conor moran, director of the wisconsin book festival. thank you for being here today with laila lalami for "conditional citizens: on belonging in america," her memoir of coming to america, what it means to be american. we have a lot of great things we can talk about with this book and current events. we were just talking in the green room. we are also joined by kate archer kent, the host of the morning show. the conversation before we get started, i have always want to say thank you to madison public library and the public library foundation. their support for free cultural events, across wisconsin, across the nation and the globe.

during the pandemic, never a question whether we would bring great cultural events and i want to thank them. i want to thank laila lalami for being here today. you get to see her in person, that didn't happen. for our donor thank you event. as such, giving away free copies of "conditional citizens: on belonging in america" today. i put a link in a green box at the bottom of your screen and you can sign up in bookselling partners -- mail copies free of charge to your home. we hope you will take advantage of that and read laila lalami's book. i will step away and let you have a wonderful conversation about laila lalami's wonderful book and see you at the end. >> guest: was a privilege to talk with you. >> guest: thank you so much, so

happy to be here. >> host: i will start with an introduction of you, i will read the bio from the back of your book where laila lalami who was born in the capital of morocco, was educated in morocco, great britain and the us and author of four novels, the arab-american book award, the kirsten right legacy award. the most recent work, the other americans, was finalist for the national book award and her essays have appeared all over the place. la times the washington post, harpers, the guardian, recipient of fellowships from the british council, the fulbright program at the guggenheim foundation. laila lalami is a creative

writing professor at the university of california at riverside and she was in los angeles where she's joining us so thank you again, such a privilege to talk about your book which was really moving and we are going to start with the opening. when you became a us citizen, this is a sweltering day in the year 2000 and you talk about 3000 people packed into the fairgrounds complex and you got your american passport which you call your powerful artifact. what did that american passport symbol lies to you? >> guest: that is an excellent question to start with because it gets to the heart of how things can be interpreted in the moment and how they can be tempered in 20 years later in the middle of the pandemic. receiving the passports is

tangible proof of us citizenship since i don't have a birth certificate. a naturalized citizen, the passport is your proof of citizenship, you don't walk around, you're not supposed to carry your naturalization certificate. the passport is essential your proof of citizenship and also the reason i said was a powerful artifact, at the time it allows you to travel to 160 countries without having to go through the formalities, americans may be unfamiliar with how complicated and tedious, how infuriating the procedures for applying for visas and that is something i hadn't gone through on my moroccan passport, so i was familiar with that and having a us passport meant travel to 150 countries and not have to do

that so the first thing i did was at the time i was working for a startup company as a computational linguists which is my training, and a conference had taken place in hong kong, and coming back to the us. and and encounter with the border agent as a citizen, i described in the book the question he asked me, didn't even speak to me but to my husband which was what was going on and he says to my husband how many camels did you

trade in for her and i was flabbergasted. rendered speechless really and then he just laughed, fought he was being funny and sent our passports through and to me that was my very first encounter with an agent of the state as a us citizen. i thought it carried a great deal of meaning about the difference between me and my husband, a native born citizen who doesn't get asked these questions. in the book that is how i certainly discussion of us citizenship and the list experience of us citizenship. >> it doesn't just happen once

-- and and how did everything change for american muslims when the planes hit the twin towers and in subsequent months and years. >> it was a defining event as much as it was for other americans in this sense, the feeling of being under attack, you didn't know how it was or reasons behind what they did. the initial reaction is shock, sorrow for the victims of the crime and immediately after that, the backlash that happened against and the people

speak who where turbines, they are frequently mistaken. it was about anybody who appears. that backlash took the form of hate crimes which is documented by the fbi. you can look at specifics for 2001 and after and you can see the spike but it is not just hate crimes which are random events driven by individuals having their own views, seek to formalize them in crime. there is a government sanctioned reaction which included things like immunization and naturalization service for those who originated from 26 countries registering as a group. then there was spying which

began before 9/11, there is surveillance, the feeling of being watched which aired on pbs so surveillance, something that happened in new york, there was a new office called the demographics unit. you would never know it is actually -- its sole purpose was to infiltrate muslim businesses from student unions in different colleges in the area. there was an informant somewhere in there. even gaining access to private homes to spy on the people who

lived there. all of that data was collected in massive databases over a number of years never leading to a single lead, terrorism, people didn't even know that it existed until the associated press who ended up winning the prize for their reporting, and then after it was exposed and written about. this happened during the mayor ship of michael bloomberg in new york. i am mentioning these because they are government sanctioned actions against american muslims, which were hate crimes. the period of time, in my memory, something that was

unprecedented because i hadn't experienced something like that before. before 9/11, to say i was born and raised in morocco, talk to me about the arab world, but then -- >> host: you are supposed to have all the answers about isis. >> guest: i am saying 9/11, before 9/11 people would treat - it was the only identity. there was a perception that everybody was lumped into the same group. in my mind it is a period of

time both had a system of environment this year but on a personal level, something i experienced in the workplace, different things that happened but since i don't cover, nothing necessarily about me, a lot of times i hear the comments more than i hear them. later just as things were coming down along comes isis and a set of questions. >> host: did you feel you could talk openly about questioning the war in iraq or afghanistan? >> guest: a great deal of awareness, everything that came out of their mouth would be

scrutinized, for any sign of disloyalty, any sign, for anything that was not american. what happened after 9/11, muslim voices that supported wars, at the time was looking at newsweek, supporting the afghanistan war and the iraq war. even though he was well respected, wasn't invited to speak on private time television, the muslims who supported the wars were

listened to, just - rabble-rousers, traders, there wasn't a sense, and susan sontag had a piece in the new yorker a week after the attack, because she expressed worry about what might happen in a country in which everybody is exposed to the same talking points, hurling towards a massive war so she was expressing concern. she was attacked in the press for weeks on that.

it was a time when just expressing disagreement of us foreign policy could cost people their careers really. >> host: i look at self identity, your whole life you lived in between languages, multiple languages, multiple cultures, countries, buffering yourself from these painful inequality use by operating in a gray zone, gray area. how it relates to the conditionals citizen. >> this is a term i came across a few years ago. it is actually a term that was coined by the pr department.

they put out back when you were operating in syria, and comments about current events and one of the things they put out after the attacks, an article calling on muslims, you either chose the side of isis or the side of the unbelievers and every one who was in the gray zone meaning wanting to coexist with others rather than just go to terrorists service, quote, creators, it meant you were in the gray zone. they view the world in black

and white and that reminded me of what george w. bush had said after 9/11 when he says you are with us or against us. there is a way of looking at the world in black and white. that always struck me as a dangerous way of looking at the world around us. even in terms of our identities. none of us are just one thing or another, not just you are a woman or a citizen or a mother or i don't know, you are a part of multiple identities, to approach the world, the world was complicated in these specific ways, extremely poisonous and dangerous. and so in the essay i talk

about my realization i have always lived in the gray zone. i grew up in arab and muslim countries and my earliest acquaintances, all of these people were christians or atheists. that was ordinary to me because that was my life. it was a massive city of people from all over, 40% of people in la are foreign-born, all of these different languages and races and religions coexisted and going about their business. so most of us living gray areas and are used do it. this idea that there is something bad about that that

is the fundamental parts of our lives, extremely distressing. i was writing about wanting to be in the gray zone, not wanting to give up on the idea of coexisting with others. >> coexisting with others. you write about simulation and the dangers of that, the notion that we are great melting pot but that's not the reality of it. you talk about the approach is more of a salad bowl keeping our core backgrounds and culture and be able to celebrate that and live that. what does that look like, the idea of integration and assimilation. >> guest: the question will never be settled in american society. one of the foundational myths, how often do you hear a nation

of immigrants. a source of pride for many americans even if in reality the immigration laws are extremely tight and favored immigrants from western europe and excluded a number of immigrants from all over the world beginning with the chinese exclusion, chinese were not allowed to immigrate to the us until 1943 and there were all kinds of other laws that were passed to exclude people of asian descent and excludes them from citizenship or people living in white neighborhoods and so on. quote quote a nation of immigrants doesn't take into account there were people before in this nation, indigenous people, who were not immigrants. meaning enslaved people.

it is a slogan that relies on a great deal of erasure. nevertheless it is a source of pride for americans that they have a nation that is so diverse where there is a binding national identity based on a shared set of principles. that also depends on figuring out how everybody else is going to live together that come from different cultures and the model the nation used for a long time, in the case of indigenous people, forcible assimilation, in indian boarding schools and forced to speak english, to assimilate into white society. over the years that model has

changed, from integration, and integration. where people, to desegregate places and integrate them. it doesn't mean adopting the society around them. in the modern era, the situation of ongoing debate, anytime there is any tension that involves cultural group. the assimilation comes back up, the essay that i write about assimilation traveling to events in reno and sat next to

a gentleman who said he was in gardena and i used to live in torrance. i knew the area. i know the area, it has changed. then he started complaining they don't assimilate. i said what do you mean? they send their children to sunday school and it bothered him. couldn't understand why it bothered him that they were sending their children to sunday school. i didn't understand what that did to him what other people were doing and that view of assimilation the demand other people give up their cultures and languages is on the ascendant. you have somebody like donald trump who complained in interviews that there is no assimilation and so assimilation is used as a cudgel. it is used as a way to save

these people do not belong here and the only way to belong is to give up everything that makes them different and that is not possible. first of all just on a basic level our identities have components, you can't ask people to give that up. >> host: on that linguistic point you spoke arabic as a child and there's a point you are chatting in the airport with your sister on the phone in arabic and getting stairs from someone right across from you until you switched to english and the person goes back to reading their magazine. another point, you are encouraging your daughter to speak arabic and encourage that as a toddler to get that fluency that she would always gravitate to english and so how

is arabic viewed in your family? and the perception from the outside world. >> the perception from the outside world is exactly what you described, perception of suspicion. there is a great story about this caller who years ago had tried to interest us publishers in translating the work of the nobel prize winning novelist from egypt. the response from us publishers, we can't do that because arabic is a controversial language. and you imagine thinking about a language - a language being controversial. >> host: -- >> guest: there is this perception that if you speak arabic you are suspicious, something you will encounter if you speak arabic in places like

airports or places that involve government surveillance of some kind. any space that is a government space. >> guest: >> host: the see something say something type of thing. >> guest: so there is a heightened perception, and speaking arabic is the height of it because you are in this airport so people do get nervous which is amusing every once in a while. but in terms of its role, obviously something i tried to pass on to my daughter but it has been an uphill battle. even though she spoke it, by the time she was in preschool and kindergarten she would

refuse to because she felt -- i am guessing, it made her look different from the other kids who speak english and she wanted to be like the other kids which is an impulse all kids have, to be like the other kids in school. and so i think it is, there is that pressure in the united states in particular to give up the languages of our parents and to have english proficiency that something the mayor of san antonio hooley and castro -- julian castro who ran for the democratic nomination, spoke about that, when he started school they were not encouraged to speak spanish. today spanish is not as proficient. he is very much an english speaker.

a pressure that is central to the idea of integration and stimulation in american society. >> host: i want to switch gears and talk about border walls and orders and talk about, thoughtfulness in your book, opening the instances, what struck me, the day you and your husband wanted to watch a soccer match crossing over the border, there was a major ordeal and you were scared. when you look at our borders system what do you see and what is the contrast especially on the southern border.

>> guest: it is something that i noticed, the land border into mexico a couple times and that was a few years ago a world cup match, wouldn't it be fun to watch this in the café with a bunch of other people, let's cross and go there and crossing, i was stunned nobody was asking for id crossing the border, it is a border town and take a lot of traffic back and forth but coming back in was different altogether. it was a lot more, the lines were longer, a lot more questions, why would you cross the border, a lot of questioning, it was a different

experience and i think it reminded me because it is similar to the experience of morocco and spain and reminded me how the border physically changed over my lifetime. people who live in the southwest border will testify, what it looks now. and it was, a situation that seasonal workers, in the border if they come they are here, in the labor perspective, makes things a lot more complicated. the view of the border is becoming more of a militarized,

physical manifestation, something observed in morocco in spain. spain has a couple land border is, the border post is a cinderblock building and you go in and out. it isn't what it is today, insanely militarized each 20 feet high, guard dogs, motion detectors. the border really has become this letter allies expression of differences between countries, something we should

think about. >> host: something i learned, if i was aware of it, a checkpoint between el paso and markup. it is 100 miles on the internal border, why do we have border patrol check points. >> guest: that is an excellent question no department of justice or homeland security need to address. i didn't even know the united states had these check points. i discovered them by chance. in el paso, these young guys,

they are not military, essentially naming for. guard dogs, serious -- they ask you are you a us citizen, they each say yes and the border patrol agent has discretionary power to decide whether they be leave you in which case you are on your way or believe you are a us citizen and have to prove it. carrying a birth certificate or us passport. or proof that you are a us citizen, to make a determination based on how you look and sound and something about your affect.

when it comes to making a decision, use unequally depending on a race, and the access -- you can be a us citizen, the border patrol doesn't believe you and basically you are stuck there and you can be put in detention until such time as you provide proof of citizenship. each year people get caught at these border checkpoints. when i got stopped myself at one of these, i started researching at these points it turns out there's quite a few of them. they missed 134, but also roving checkpoints. when you add up all the checkpoints you are looking at something like 200. within 100 miles of land borders between mexico and

canada but also see borders in the atlantic and pacific. they are everywhere in the us and the majority of the us population lives in the border zone which means any point border patrol could be setting up a checkpoint and saying are you a us citizen? making these determinations so it is a massive amount of power and it goes back to a regulation in 1962 that extended the power of border patrol to looking within the border in case people got a reduction in their papers and that power was extended to 100 miles a year later and that has been on the books, no one has ever challenged it, it is one of those things that is folded,

and what happens in that experience is the more funding we give to particular agencies the more we find reasons to justify that funding so border patrol had its budget ballooned over the last 30 years, to having these checkpoints, something we should consider if you have never come across a checkpoint it is probably not a problem in your life but if you live near one, it can be a disruptive force, driving to school or anywhere that involves being on that road where the checkpoints is you get stopped and asked that question. it can really turn into a form of harassment if you're constantly told where is your

paper? and you happen to be a nonwhite person you are getting stopped more often so it can turn into a form of harassment. >> host: i want to turn to the travel ban shortly after donald trump took office, he issued the executive man banning muslim majority countries. you viewed the muslim man as the racing muslims from america's collective past. what does this effectively do to american muslims in our country and this travel ban? >> guest: a number of things. one of the things i want to say is we are supposed to call a travel ban because initial countries that were put on his

were all muslim countries but in the form of which survived legal challenges which is a presidential proclamation the supreme court upheld in 2018, a list of five muslim countries. the first thing i want to say is we ended up with the term travel ban after a great deal of back and forth within the administration, constitutional and legal challenges. in reality what it is is a muslim man, they banned citizens from leaving their countries, they are banned from leaving their own countries and venezuela the ban does not apply to venezuelan officials, but the other 5 countries

combined, 80,000 visas so if you have a regulation, 80,000 people from one community and 44 another. inclusion of that number for the supreme court to say it was neutral to religion and let it become law. the muslim man, the long series of immigration restrictions the united states has imposed. that is one of many others. the most serious of which is essentially shut down immigration, to every one.

the senses from 30 or 40 years earlier, established quotas. a way to ensure that white immigrants arrive in african and south american and so on. the restrictions that were in it really were not abolished fully until 1965. we only had new year's of immigration being open, doesn't mean everybody comes but anybody can apply to come but then we are going back to those

restrictions and saying people from these countries can't apply to come to the us. didn't matter where they had been or what they might contribute or what family they have or who they are trying to join, they are simply not eligible to come, end of story. is a xena phobic ban but it is part of that history. we are seeing with immigration periods of extension and contraction and now is the beginning of a major period of contraction begin with the muslim ban which was followed by another man that targeted mostly african and asian countries. my expectation is if there is a trump reelection we are going to see new bans. the administration proposed rules on student visas that will ban many african -- asian

students from coming to the us. the way they do that is not saying people from africa or asia can't come. it is by writing laws that look like they are racially neutral that get the same results as if they are not racially neutral. the final point i want to make about the muslim ban, this ties its erasure, muslims have been in america since long before there was a colony of jamestown. the earliest that landed here came with spanish expeditions and explore the north american continent. the idea that you are going to ban people here before you were arrived is kind of telling. it tells us that you perceive yourself to have the power to decide who belongs in this country and who doesn't. so i think because that

history, that history is not really taught in schools is contributes to a kind of the reader of muslims from collective american history and makes these bands seem like they are just targeted at foreigners when in reality they are targeting americans like you and me. if you were a yemeni american, you lost the ability, if you are born here, you have lost the ability to sponsor grandmother or uncle or cousin or anybody born in yemen. if you're born here in the same way you are a german you have that right so it has taken away rights from people from yemen, people of yemeni dissent who are nativeborn americans. it is stripping away at the

constitutional rights of people here but looks like it is only targeted at immigrants abroad. >> host: the president has used rhetoric against muslims. made tweets blasting radical islamic terrorism, calling countries on the muslim ban list dangerous. what do the tweets and rhetoric do not only for the muslim community but for our country as a whole? >> guest: i think it is easy with somebody as vulgar and as blunt as the president to seem as though he is unique but he isn't. he is somebody that got to his position by riding a wave of popular support. people had to agree with him or they wouldn't have voted for him. i think he is part of a long

tradition of xenophobic traditions in the us and it is something that maybe is not pleasant, something that predated him but it is nonetheless true and i think just the constant stream of tweets i find exhausting. i don't follow him, i don't retweet him, i don't propagate what he has to say, i think i understand what he is trying to communicate by reading about it in the headlines, but i don't feel the need, and and he is - if he loses the election his supporters will still be around and there is going to have to

be some kind of resolution to this debate we are having, what kind of country we want to live in. that is what it comes down to. we want to live in a country that is diverse, where everybody is bound by a set of shared principles. we want to live in a country in which some people mainly white people have more rights than anybody else, that it is ultimately what donald trump is promising people. if not him, somebody will come after him that will make that progress a bit more elegantly than he has. he has this ability to speak in very vulgar terms and that is what makes him, i think, so, so divisive. if there was another candidate who proposed the same policies that was more elegant and polished, it would be a lot

scarier and a lot more effective. >> host: i want to look at gender for a moment that you lived under a monarchy. you are a citizen of the us, but neither structure afforded you opportunities to be on equal footing as men and enjoy the same rights and privileges. the reaction you get is disbelief. really? can you explain why you haven't felt free or fully equal in either country? >> guest: it has to do with the fact that patriarchy is a global system. ..

i live in california which does have, you know, you have access to reproductive care. but in other states that's not necessarily the case a cousin of this been so many closures of abortion clinics. you can tell yourself we have these rights and, therefore, it's better to live your then to live in another country. but rights are never just or it should never be considered entirely taken for granted. for example, right now we're going through, we just finished two weeks of hearings of the supreme court justice whose track record indicates less than indicates that she will not support abortion as a right. it's entirely possible within the next few years that right will be taken way. that's what i mean. you can tell yourself give more rights but that's kind of just

sort of an effort at consolation. i think it's a global problem. i think women do phase a lot more challenges to the bodily integrity and to living life in which they can make their own medical decisions and they can also be taken seriously with respect to things like sexual harassment or sexual assault. the president himself has a dozen or so allegations of sexual assault against him, and in those have led to any kind of legal sort of, yeah. >> what can the u.s. do to take strides toward equal citizenship? what do you want to see -- i mean, what can this country do

first to start moving in that direction of equal citizenship? >> i think it means, i think in order to get equal citizenship it is going to require each of us to use what talents we have and what privileges we have two smash this idea and the reality of hierarchical citizenship. this is a country that managed to give us the civil rights movement, right? so i know that it has the possibility of changing things. we needed movement just like that to ensure that citizenship is equal among us and is not this hierarchical thing where some people have more rights than others, and that is going to require each of us to take actions. obviously in a very, very small way voting and taking part of

the electoral process is part of that and that is so important because the people who make the decisions are not just presidents. i think that there's just too much time and attention spent on presidential candidates and probably not enough on the person who is running for the school board or who is running for county sheriff, who is running for district attorneys, and those other races that are going to the biggest impact on our day-to-day lives, , and how criminal justice is enacted in our communities, on what textbooks are children read. all of these decisions are not made in washington. they are made right in our communities so voting and being involved in those down ballot races are actually self-important. but outside of the electoral cycle there's always an opportunity to be a involved in our communities, and that can take the form of being involved in bell funds for the weight mitchell aid organizations, volunteering time at school, a

number of the problems that we have released him from the fact that the summit inequality and summit of it takes place a early in people's lives. if we can basically give some of our time and volunteer some of our time to help children at school who are disadvantaged, who doesn't have a parent or stays home, i think i can make a huge difference in people's lives. like right now that we are in a pandemic, an entire generation of kids that they left behind simply because of something as simple as not having access to wi-fi at home or not having access to a space at home in which they can do their homework. homework. even if the school provides the devices, doesn't necessarily mean that wi-fi is available. just basically being involved in organizations that can address these early, early inequalities, that can make a huge difference in the future.

>> i am wondering, maybe we can in this way, but do you feel some hope when you look around, will you ever be able to look at your gray zone in a different way? >> well, i sure hope so. it's something that i do feel hope when i look at our younger generation. i think that they are so involved come for example, my daughters from which involved in the climate movement. it's something that matters to her because, so we live in california and we were talking about this in the green room about how we've had wildfires this summer that it lasted so long that the air quality is so terrible you can't even go out and take a walk. today is not so bad but this is the kind of world that we are leaving them and they very much feel that their future has been mortgaged and has been risked.

so they are involved in trying to change that. so i do find hope in young people, and pretty much in so many others are actually being agents of change. so when i wake up in the morning, this is a question as myself, like how can i be an agent of change? i don't want to just be a person who watches it all with that getting involved. >> does your daughter still want to be president? >> no. >> you mentioned, that could change. i think she was like ten or 12. >> no, no. she is a musician, an artist i think. >> but that was really conflicted for you because of you know, of gender, of race, of a lot of things, you know, feelings. >> i hope things are better by the time she's old enough to be

president. we have few years to go. we have a lot of work to do before. >> well, laila, this is than such an honor and such a pleasure. i'm so grateful to have the opportunity to talk with you today. >> thank you so much for having me, kate. thank you all for listening. >> this is great. everyone gets there free copy of the book. that's amazing. that's wonderful. >> well, thank you so much for such a wonderful conversation, laila. thank you for this book. kate, thank you for your very thoughtful questions taking us through it. >> colorado governor jerry post is expected to brief reporters today about the pandemic response and the discovery of aa new variant of the disease in his state. this was supposed to start at noon eastern but they appear to be running a little behind. we will take you there live when he starts. >> will begit