Kruse's Keys: Read "Someone Like Us" to

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Check out our readings lists from 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014  

NOTE: I love former President Obama's yearly booklists!  While I may not have agreed with some of his policies politically, I respect the man and love his voracious reading appetite.  I found this one on his 2024 book list. Incidentally, I highly recommend his thoughtful and introspective memoir A Promised Land which I wrote about in my 2024 Reading list here. 

I discovered novelist Dinaw Mengestu several years ago through his beautiful 2007 debut novel ""All the Things That Heaven Bears," (my short review is here).  He later followed  it up with his sweeping show stopper "All Our Names" which I called The Great African Novel in my review here.  

While his latest story "Someone Like Us" is far less sweeping that his previous novels, it still builds out Mengestu's tapestry of the immigrant experience in America by focusing on an Ethiopian father and son's evoloving relationship.  Told against scenes shifting from Ethiopia to France to Chicago and times past and present, Mengestu doesn't shy away from difficult topics like mental health and substance abuse and the toll they take on memory and relationships.  In an era where terms like "immigration" carry a charge weight, Someone Like Us adds important context and hopefully develops increased empathy in the reader on the myriad struggles faced by immigrants by everything from police stops to just not knowing how America works.  Books like these are important in personalizing difficult topics and allowing the reader to grapple with a story in which there are no easy answers .