Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota’s autobiography, “This Is What America
Looks Like: My Journey From Refugee to Congresswoman,” broadened my perspective on the immigrant and refugee experience.
As a Muslim woman of color, Rep. Omar has been the repeated target of racially charged and Islamaphobic rhetoric by fellow house members. Unsurprisingly, this includes our very own Rep. Lauren Boebert who coined the term “jihad-squad” to refer to Rep. Omar and other members of color.
The path detailed in this book that led Rep. Omar to become the first Somali American and the first naturalized African elected to Congress drew empathy from the depths of my soul. This book deserves the utmost attention.
Spending her early childhood in Somalia, Rep. Omar was a seriously brave girl. She was the youngest and smallest of seven siblings, though she seemed to be born resolute and unable to back down from injustices. She was making the school bullies eat dirt and learning to be deeply independent.
When the Somali Civil War broke out, Rep. Omar was just eight years old. She recollects her home, Mogadishu, being ravaged by gunfire, bombing and starvation. The deafening air raids that frightened her family in their lavish, multi-generational home heightened the stomach churning silence in between. She was forced to flee her country, her large family splintered and her life was completely upended.
Rep. Omar balances this violence with what I can only describe as a child’s desire for “normal.” Rapidly adjusting to the dangerous life in the Dadaab refugee camp, she was able to fondly recollect her father playing betting games or sneaking off at night to watch movies. All the while surrounded by death, disease and debauchery.
Even after battling the asylum process and settling in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Rep. Omar, a teenager at the time, was met with faith-based discrimination and bigotry. However, those hardships were overshadowed at first by the simple freedoms many Americans take for granted each day.
Straightforward activities like going to the grocery store or taking a casual stroll around the neighborhood had been inaccessible to Rep. Omar for years. I began to think about students refusing to return to Uvalde or Sandy Hook, fearing that another person with an automatic weapon would wreak havoc on their school, thus making their freedom to exist safely inaccessible.
Currently, Rep. Omar is a beacon of humanity in Congress alongside others like Rep. Cori Bush, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Rashida Tlaib. Nicknamed “The Squad”, they are known for pressing hard issues, demanding answers and uplifting the underserved. Rep. Omar’s political action is embedded in her experiences laid out in this book and it has become the backbone of her leadership as a U.S. Congresswoman.
While tackling the injustices of the world may not be as simple as pulverizing some little kid’s face into the dirt after he made a “yo mama” joke at you on the playground, the fortitude to stand up for yourself and others carries through.
