Americanized: rebel without a green card, by Sara Saedi

I really enjoyed this memoir by Sara Saedi whose family traveled to the United States in the hope of applying for asylum. When their paperwork was lost they began a decades-long process to apply for residency status and ultimately citizenship, which was granted to Ms. Saedi in 2005. She was only two years old in 1982 when her family decided to leave Iran, which had become too dangerous for them. They met up with family in the U.S. who were already established, and Ms. Saedi's parents were able to open their own business and achieve a modicum of stability. However, their undocumented status weighed heavily on all of them, and they worked tirelessly to procure the documents that would allow them to first work in the U.S. and ultimately apply for citizenship. Ms. Saedi's tells their story from her own perspective: that of a child who only slowly becomes aware of their perilous situation. Her personality really comes through in this intimate and loving story about her family and their efforts to fit in. Because this book tells her tale from childhood on, I think it would be a great read for both adults and the YA crowd. Published in  2018, this book touches only lightly on the anti-immigrant policies of the first Trump administration. It was almost painful to read how quaintly hopeful Ms. Saedi was about the future of immigration and immigrants in this country, given the current political climate.