BEKI member Roya Hakakian will speak about her newest book, A Beginner's Guide to America, which gives us a portrait of what the new immigrant experience in America is really like. Roya captures the texture of life in a new place in all its complexity, laying bare both its beauty and its darkness as she discusses race, sex, love, death, consumerism, and what it is like to be from a country that is in America’s crosshairs. Her tenderly perceptive and surprisingly humorous account is Hakakian’s candid love letter to America.