One constant in American life is that most of us fail most of the time to see just how American we are. Often, we have to leave and come back—from a trip abroad, for instance—to notice what qualities characterize us as a people. But a transporting book can do the trick, too. The new memoir from Somali-born green card lottery winner Abdi Nor Iftin, Call Me American, is one such book.

Iftin came of age in war-torn Mogadishu, where the other boys called him “the American” because of his grasp of idiomatic English and his all-consuming obsession with our culture. He endured daily whippings at the local madrassa and bouts of near starvation during the chaotic depths of the Somalia’s ongoing 26-year civil war, all the while clinging to a conviction that puzzled his compatriots. Iftin believed from adolescence onward that he was meant to be—and in a deeper sense already was—what his friends jokingly called him, and what he would one day officially become: American.