Here We Are American Dreams American Nightmares

A heartfelt memoir of the immigrant experience from NPR Silicon Valley correspondent Aarti Shahani.

After arriving in New York City in the 1980s, the Shahani family opens a small electronics store. Aarti, their youngest child, wins a scholarship to one of Manhattan's most elite prep schools. They are well on their way to the American Dream, until their fortunes turn. When they mistakenly sell watches and calculators to the wrong people--members of the Cali drug cartel--the family gets caught in a legal case that destroys them, incrementally, over the course of 15 years.

Here We Are is the hearing the Shahani family never had, despite all the time they spent being judged. Aarti's father never recovers from the humiliation. And she, who has the chance to leave and live a better life, forever feels singularly defined by his (and their) crisis. She's torn between moving on and looking back.

This family saga is full of colorful characters: a feisty mom who'll take sewing shears to anyone who threatens her blood; a big brother, caught between the Old World and New, who agrees to an arranged marriage; a big sister who refuses to lose her sense of humor, even in the notorious jail Rikers Island.

As we follow the Shahanis' extreme ups and downs, Here We Are becomes a fascinating insider account of the elusive nature of legality and of the deep schism in American culture by which the "deserving" are deified and the "undeserving" demonized, at times relentlessly.

Ultimately, Here We Are is a coming-of-age story, a love letter from an outspoken modern daughter to her soft-spoken Old World father. She never expected they'd become best friends.

A heartfelt memoir about the immigrant experience from NPR Silicon Valley correspondent Aarti Shahani.

Who really belongs in America? That question has chased every newcomer and many native born since the founding of the republic. In this heart-wrenching, vulnerable and witty memoir, journalist Aarti Shahani digs deep inside herself and her family for an answer--one that she finds in an unlikely place.

The Shahanis came to Queens--from India, by way of Casablanca--in the 1980s. They were undocumented for a few years and then, with the arrival of their green cards, they thought they'd made it. This memoir is the story of how they did, and didn't.

Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares follows the lives of Aarti, the precocious scholarship kid at one of Manhattan's most elite prep schools, and her dad, the shopkeeper who mistakenly sells watches and calculators to the notorious Cali drug cartel. Together, the two represent the extremes that coexist in our country, even within a single family, and a truth about immigrants that gets lost in the headlines. It isn't a matter of good or evil; it's complicated.

Ultimately, Here We Are is a coming-of-age story, a love letter from an outspoken modern daughter to her soft-spoken Old World father. She never expected they'd become best friends.

Here We Are is a heart-wrenching memoir about an immigrant family's American Dream, the justice system that took it away, and the daughter who fought to get it back, from NPR correspondent Aarti Namdev Shahani.

The Shahanis came to Queens--from India, by way of Casablanca--in the 1980s. They were undocumented for a few unsteady years and then, with the arrival of their green cards, they thought they'd made it. This is the story of how they did, and didn't; the unforeseen obstacles that propelled them into years of disillusionment and heartbreak; and the strength of a family determined to stay together.

Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares follows the lives of Aarti, the precocious scholarship kid at one of Manhattan's most elite prep schools, and her dad, the shopkeeper who mistakenly sells watches and calculators to the notorious Cali drug cartel. Together, the two represent the extremes that coexist in our country, even within a single family, and a truth about immigrants that gets lost in the headlines. It isn't a matter of good or evil; it's complicated.

Ultimately, Here We Are is a coming-of-age story, a love letter from an outspoken modern daughter to her soft-spoken Old World father. She never expected they'd become best friends.