'I've tried to invest in joy': Wajahat Ali on traumas physical, political and global
LOS ANGELES — Wajahat Ali has spent much of his life narrowly escaping death and disaster.
The Pakistani American writer and political commentator tells the story in his funny and heart-wrenching new memoir, "Go Back to Where You Came From." Growing up in Fremont, California, Ali was a chubby, comic book-loving boy with severe allergies, obsessive-compulsive disorder and a Harry Potter-ish scar on his forehead from when he was hit by a motorcyclist. "Unlike some of my peers," he writes, "I could never blend and melt into the magical American pot."
He developed life-threatening pneumonia. Then malaria. Later, congestive heart failure. His successful immigrant parents were imprisoned for alleged wire and mail fraud in an anti-piracy sweep, leaving their only son to provide for his live-in grandmothers at age 21. His daughter was diagnosed, at age 2, with Stage 4 liver cancer.
Despite all these personal hardships, Ali's tale is a hopeful
