She provides an excellent response to the elephantine question in the room: What's with the hijab? This is America. Omar explains elegantly and cogently,
The hijab wasn't about a piece of cloth or the battle against objectification. Instead it was really a symbol of the purity of my presence in the world. It makes sense to me that I need to cover pieces of myself to preserve who I am and feel whole. I'm centered by the hijab, because it connects me to a whole set of internally held beliefs.
This most excellent answer pre-rebuffs any notion of seeing her hiding terrorist thoughts behind the head gear. Now that everyone in America has to wear masks, and have even taken to stylin' them, maybe they can catch the vibe she's expressing.
The latter part of the book contains some interesting bits and pieces on her irrepressible rise in politics -- it almost seems like an inevitability: As her buddies say, "It's Ilhan Time." There's also a nice moment she shares of her time sitting next to Speaker of the House Pelosi on an overseas trip together, the elderly stateswoman giving her some pom-pom tips on keeping her spirits up during the certain attacks on her character (Omar describes the many that have come her way since running for office, including from members of the Somali community angry that a girl would deem to lead).
And after being elected to the House in 2016, there's the return trip to visit Somalia, and Mogadishu, her birthplace, where she is deeply disappointed:
When I arrived in Mogadishu, it was not the city in which I had lived.
No monument was fully intact. Familiar roads were blockaded. Both my great-grandmother's house and my childhood home were inaccessible.
Grief-stricken, I went back to the hotel and fell asleep -- for sixteen hours!
An elderly restaurant worker she talks with says that her sleep indicates she's finally cut her "umbilical" connection to Mama Somalia. This leads to a kind of epiphany during which, she says,
I felt obligated to return and speak about my refugee experience for the first time and to advocate for empathetic policies that take into account real human suffering.
She means it. She's a young politician. And I'll be sending her campaign a tax-deductible contribution.
In the memoir's final chapter, "The World Belongs To Those Who Show Up," the reader is treated with a stump speech; you know, hopey dopey, rah rah rah, Unity Diversity, e pluribus unum. This is all good stuff, rousing really, even for an old cynic; you like to see the kids working off the previous generation's karma with audacious enthusiasm, rekindling ideals that get muddled in our pre-Alzheimer days (Did I really believe that once? I'm thinking. Good for me.) And it's nice to hear her going on about the evil influence that led to George Floyd being murdered by cops (let's not forget that a couple of them watched Chauvin get up to his knee in neck, while Floyd begged for help, and did nothing to stop it, a crime). And it's good to know, in a way, that Omar's political ambitions already contain a built-in governor: She will never be running for president.
But with any luck, she and her feminist buddies in The Squad will push some old privileged face into the sand and get some People sh*t done for a change.
(Article changed on December 22, 2020 at 00:05)
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