Starred review from October 31, 2022
“I was torn within myself, trying to be two people at once,” writes Aziz, a lawyer and former foreign policy adviser for Justin Trudeau’s administration in Canada, in this striking debut. Raised in 1990s suburban Toronto as the son of Pakistani Muslim immigrants, Aziz confesses to being an “apathetic” student before he watched then–presidential candidate Barack Obama give a speech on CNN. He was, he writes, struck by their similarities: “the immigrant father, the feeling of being stuck between worlds, the search for roots, the need to connect to something outside himself.” After graduating from Cambridge University and Yale Law School, Aziz returned to Canada in 2017 and became a foreign policy adviser in the Canadian government, but after experiencing escalating microaggressions from white coworkers, he resigned “with my dignity intact.” In 2021, a trip to Pakistan allowed him to reconnect with his culture: “I was reclaiming some pieces of history all for myself.” Aziz maintains a sharp awareness as he confronts his “immigrant boy’s need to eat pain and keep going” and celebrates his heritage (“The canvas given to me from before my birth had already been beautiful”). The result, a sterling portrait of personal revelation, cuts to the bone. Agent: Bonnie Nadell, Hill Nadell Literary Agency.
November 1, 2022
The son of working-class Pakistani Canadian parents, Aziz proved his love of books and belief in education by winning scholarships to Queen's University in Ontario, Sciences Po in Paris, Cambridge University in England, and Yale Law School in the United States. But as he explains here, he never got over the sense of shame, uncertainty, and powerlessness that comes from being a brown-skinned boy in an elitist white world.
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
February 1, 2023
The story of a Pakistani Canadian who rose from one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Toronto to become a foreign policy adviser for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Aziz grew up in an immigrant family in Scarborough, a working-class Toronto suburb nicknamed Scartown, which was "always described by its gangs, its shootings, stabbings, and immigrant families." The author writes candidly about his experiences with bullying and struggling to keep his grades up despite his natural curiosity. In 2003, the family moved to Mississauga, where his father managed to buy a house. Afraid of some of his classmates' violent tendencies, Aziz transformed himself into a "goon," and his teachers fretted about his wasted potential. Amid this turmoil, he happened upon his grandmother watching then presidential candidate Barack Obama giving a speech on CNN. "I stood, stunned, solitary in my amazement," he writes. "It wasn't just how the man looked but what he was saying: how his name had given him problems, how he had struggled to see a place for himself in the world, how one's background should not be a barrier to one's success, how he was running for the highest office in the land to help those who had been left behind." At that moment, Aziz realized he could "educate myself out of my apathy." He went on to earn scholarships to Queen's University, Cambridge, and Yale Law School before becoming an adviser to the Trudeau administration. Aziz provides a unique glimpse into a working-class, immigration experience rarely found in American literature. However, the overwritten prose lacks nuance, and the author attributes many major life transitions to small moments (like Obama's speech). Furthermore, some of his (mostly negative) descriptions of poor neighborhoods and immigrant families are reductive. While Aziz's pain is palpable and his story inspiring, the book would have benefited from less raw emotion and more processing and analysis. An intermittently intriguing but undercooked memoir about the Pakistani Canadian experience.
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