If you are a thoughtful, decent human being at this time, you should be bobbing between waves of anger and panic, on the verge of drowning in a sea of insanity. Now, imagine sitting down to write a book. Likely, by the second or third page, your prose would resemble that of the author character, played by Jack Nicholson, in the 1980 horror movie The Shining. Suketu Mehta, through writing skill and knowledge, transformed these righteous emotions into This Land is Our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto.
This book is being written in sorrow and rage -- as well as hope. I am angry: about the staggering global hypocrisy of the rich nations, having robbed the poor ones of their future, now arguing against a reverse movement of peoples -- not to invade and conquer and steal, but to work. Angry at the ecological devastation that has been visited upon the planet by the West, and which now demands that the poor nations stop emitting carbon dioxide. Angry at the depiction of people like my family and the other families that have continued in my family's path, because the had no other choice, as freeloaders, drug dealers, and rapists. I'm tired of apologizing for moving. These walls, these borders, between the peoples of the earth: they are of recent vintage, and they are flimsy. [pp. 8-9]
