Summary of Nikesh Shukla & Chimene Suleyman's The Good Immigrant

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Sample Book Insights:

#1 Write because it’s something to do, something your parents will let you do because it looks like homework. Write because you need to drown out the sound of your parents’ fighting deep into the night. When your favorite professor, senior year, fails your paper on modernism, you promise yourself to write more.

#2 When you are writing your thesis, do not mention that you want to write what you know. Instead, say that you want to write about math, chaos theory, or rape. When your advisor suggests you work on a novel, hear it like a curse: an arranged marriage and a death sentence.

#3 You write your first novel, and you realize that you hate your parents, your blood, and your anxieties surrounding the new land you live in. You realize that no one else will see it anyway.

#4 Around Persian New Year, your first novel is published, and you are hailed as the first Iranian-American novelist. But four years later, you are still struggling to make ends meet. You pitch a piece on Iranians celebrating Persian New Year to a respected newspaper, but they don’t want your work.