On a sweltering day 20 years ago—“a day when the marine layer over Los Angeles cleared off before breakfast”—Laila Lalami became a naturalized American citizen. She was 32, blessed not just with a Ph.D. in linguistics but also with an American husband, a network engineer who listened to grunge music and made her abandon her “distrust of romance.” The couple realized that life was now a choice between his Californian domicile and her native Morocco: “One of us,” she writes in “Conditional Citizens”—a meditation on “belonging in America”—“had to live in the other’s country.” So Ms. Lalami, “young and in love,” made a commitment...

Source: Wall Street Journal September 18, 2020 22:07 UTC