This Land Is Our Land
An Immigrant's Manifesto
Published on 5. August 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
304 pages
978-1-5291-1295-5 (ISBN)
Description
An impassioned defence of global immigration from the acclaimed author of Maximum City.
Drawing on his family's own experience emigrating from India to Britain and America, and years of reporting around the world, Suketu Mehta subjects the worldwide anti-immigrant backlash to withering scrutiny. The West, he argues, is being destroyed not by immigrants but by the fear of immigrants. He juxtaposes the phony narratives of populist ideologues with the ordinary heroism of labourers, nannies and others, from Dubai to New York, and explains why more people are on the move today than ever before. As civil strife and climate change reshape large parts of the planet, it is little surprise that borders have become so porous.
This Land is Our Land also stresses the destructive legacies of colonialism and global inequality on large swathes of the world. When today's immigrants are asked, 'Why are you here?', they can justly respond, 'We are here because you were there.' And now that they are here, as Mehta demonstrates, immigrants bring great benefits, enabling countries and communities to flourish.
Impassioned, rigorous, and richly stocked with memorable stories and characters, This Land Is Our Land is a timely and necessary intervention, and literary polemic of the highest order.
Drawing on his family's own experience emigrating from India to Britain and America, and years of reporting around the world, Suketu Mehta subjects the worldwide anti-immigrant backlash to withering scrutiny. The West, he argues, is being destroyed not by immigrants but by the fear of immigrants. He juxtaposes the phony narratives of populist ideologues with the ordinary heroism of labourers, nannies and others, from Dubai to New York, and explains why more people are on the move today than ever before. As civil strife and climate change reshape large parts of the planet, it is little surprise that borders have become so porous.
This Land is Our Land also stresses the destructive legacies of colonialism and global inequality on large swathes of the world. When today's immigrants are asked, 'Why are you here?', they can justly respond, 'We are here because you were there.' And now that they are here, as Mehta demonstrates, immigrants bring great benefits, enabling countries and communities to flourish.
Impassioned, rigorous, and richly stocked with memorable stories and characters, This Land Is Our Land is a timely and necessary intervention, and literary polemic of the highest order.
Reviews / Votes
A meticulously researched and deeply felt corrective to the public narrative of who today's migrants are, why they are coming, and what economic and historical forces have propelled them from their homes into faraway lands... This Land Is Our Land reads like an impassioned survey course on migration, laying bare the origins of mass migration in searing clarity... well argued, cathartic and abundantly sourced. * The New York Times Book Review * There are many mic-drop moments and eminently quotable lines... [This Land Is Our Land] is a blistering argument that earns its place in this emotional debate. * Wall Street Journal * Mehta's book is a brilliant, deliberately political rebuff to the increasingly popular view that immigrants are a problem... It's a very powerful book, but it also has a wit about it, which makes it very attractive. * Guardian * A plea from the heart for a radical re-evaluation of the West's treatment of those on the move... Mehta does not pull any punches... [he] knows exactly how to get your attention... and how to have you squirming in your seat. * New Internationalist * An intelligent, well-reasoned case for freedom of movement in an era of walls and fences. * Kirkus Reviews * Written 'in sorrow and anger', this is a brilliant and urgently necessary book, eloquently making the case against bigotry and for all of us migrants - what we are not, who we are, and why we deserve to be welcomed, not feared. -- Salman Rushdie A powerful, passionate, angry, and hopeful cry for sanity and justice by one of our finest writers. Mehta's heart-felt book is a much-needed and potent antidote to the anti-migrant rhetoric that has grown so threateningly loud of late. Let them come! -- Mohsin Hamid Suketu Mehta has written a burning indictment of anti-immigrant hypocrisy... Rousing and immensely readable, it is an anthem for all of us. -- Jhumpa Lahiri Mehta has written a compassionate and powerful plea on behalf of migrants that also reveals the deep forces that propel them on their journeys. He exposes the demeaning ways that migrants are treated around the world, and the very human aspirations that may lead them to accept this dehumanization. In so doing, he gives us a searing indictment of those, like Donald Trump, who do so much to make their plight even worse. -- Joseph Stiglitz The must-read book for 2019. Suketu Mehta is one of our finest thinkers and writers on the subject of immigration. What begins as a journey that mixes just the right amount of humour, anger and bewilderment at the state of our nation, ends up with a surprising double-shot of hope. This is the rare book that is pragmatic and unsentimental, and yet oddly uplifting. -- Gary ShteyngartMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 132 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
220 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5291-1295-5 (9781529112955)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
08/2019
Vintage Digital
€9.49
Available for download
Person
Suketu Mehta is the author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and won the Kiriyama Prize and the Hutch Crossword Award. His work has been published in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Granta, Harper's, Time, and GQ. He has won a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Writers' Award, and an O. Henry Prize. He was born in Calcutta and lives in New York City, where he is an associate professor of journalism at New York University.