NPR correspondent Shahani talks about her memoir, a heartfelt rendering of the immigrant experience, written as a love letter from an outspoken modern daughter to her soft-spoken Old World father. She’ll be in conversation with Joy Powers, Producer of WUWM’s Lake Effect. Register for this event on the Milwaukee Public Library website.

Who really belongs in America? That question has chased every newcomer and many native-born since the founding of the republic. In this heart-wrenching, vulnerable, and witty memoir, journalist Aarti Shahani digs deep inside her family for an answer she finds in an unlikely place.

The Shahanis came to Flushing, Queens (one of the most diverse zip codes in the country) from India, by way of Casablanca, in the 1980s. They were undocumented for a few years and then, with the arrival of their green cards, they thought they’d made it. Shahani reflects upon how they did and didn’t. Here We Are follows the lives of Aarti, the precocious scholarship kid at an elite Manhattan prep school, and her dad, the shopkeeper who mistakenly sells watches and calculators to the notorious Cali drug cartel. Together, the two represent the extremes that coexist in our country and the truths about immigrants that get lost in the headlines.

Aarti Namdev Shahani is a Technology Correspondent for NPR based in Silicon Valley. She received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and an Investigative Reporters & Editors Award. Before journalism, she was a community organizer in New York City, helping prisoners and families facing deportation. Shahani received a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Wisconsin native Joy Powers is Producer of WUWM’s Lake Effect. She was the Public Affairs Director at WERS-fm, and produced the station’s AP Award Winning program, You Are Here.

Sunday, October 13, 2 pm, at Milwaukee Public Library’s Centennial Hall, 733 N Eighth St