Americanized: Rebel Without a Green Card

Saedi, Sara. Americanized: Rebel Without a Green Card
February 6th 2018 by Knopf Books for Young Readers
Copy provided by the publisher

This memoir chronicles the experiences of writer Saedi, who was born in Iran in 1980 and lived in the United States after the age of two. Her parents tried a variety of tactics to obtain legal residency, but has their papers requesting political asylum lost, and ran into difficulties with every application they turned in for over twenty years. This put both Sara and her older sister into a number of difficult situations with jobs, college, and their future in the U.S., the only country they really knew. While this was clearly an important factor in Saedi's life, she also had a fairly normal 1990s adolescence, with the same obsessions over clothes, boys, and grunge bands that other teens at that time shared. Recounting these experiences is equal parts historical accounts and exploration of the problems faces many children of immigrants in the past and also today.
Strengths: This is a timely #ownvoices account of immigration that will help readers to understand the challenges faced in the process becoming legal citizens of the US. The history of Iran will be interesting to readers who want more information about the country after reading It Ain't So Awful, Falafel. The details of teen life in the 1990s will appeal to readers who have read Jay Asher's The Future of Us or who are addicted to My So Called Life. I suppose there could be a few teens who parents were teens in the 1990s.
Weaknesses: This might struggle to find an audience. I know that middle school students don't read memoirs much; perhaps the more mature content of this will appeal to older readers.
What I really think: I would definitely buy this for a high school library, but will pass on purchase for middle school due to content and language.