Home > Work > This Is What America Looks Like: My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman
1 " As a refugee who fled civil war as a child, I am still trying to figure out where I fit in - which is perhaps why the most important note I found sticking to the wall outside my office had only three words. You belong here. "
― Ilhan Omar , This Is What America Looks Like: My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman
2 " As we continue to perfect our union, citizens, neighbors, coworkers, and family must keep expanding our circles of self-interest to learn and relearn the fundamental truth that we are all connected. The more invested we are in one another, the better all of us ultimately will be. "
3 " The more we listen to and learn from those with different backgrounds and present circumstances from our own, the more we can find connections to our own lived experience. "
4 " I have no religious expectation of her or of anybody else for that matter. I’m a Muslim and live as such, but I’m also a humanist. Just as I believe in God, so also do I believe that we are all connected no matter our faith, belief in science, race, or country of origin. We all have an ability to enrich one another not in spite of our differences but because of them. "
5 " You can’t take away the past; you can only add to the narrative. There is a narrative about Muslims that already exists. I’m not here to undo or rewrite history. That is propaganda or an impossibility. What I, and others, can do is expand on the notion of what it means to be Muslim, continue the story line that survives alongside us. "
6 " Although we witnessed the worst of human nature in Utange, we also witnessed the best of it. The greatest lesson I came away with from my time in the refugee camp is that your today doesn’t get to determine your tomorrow. Everything in life is fluid. Pride, strength, and responsibility—all of those notions are the domain of people in comfort and safety. When you’re facing death, you’re not guided by your importance or your past, and you certainly don’t worry about whether your pride is intact. Again and again, I witnessed that if you can push through whatever is happening today, tomorrow might be worse, but it could also be better. The only option for the human spirit is to keep going. "
7 " The big lesson was that it’s possible to treat people as your equal even as you manage them. "
8 " And yet I also rail against having every action I take reduced to a social construct stemming from my religion, stripping me of the complexities of multidimensional thought. I am a human, not a figurehead. I have always chafed at owning other people’s notions about my identities, be it what it means to be a mother or a member of Congress. "
9 " To know there was someone whom I could always count on but who also let me be whatever I wanted to be gave me more security than anything else could. "
10 " Do I care enough? If so, then I don't care about what other people think about my presence in a room or conversation "
11 " I grew up knowing that hard things only get harder when you don’t have real conversations about them. "
12 " I fully got it. The hijab wasn’t about a piece of cloth or the battle against objectification. Instead it was really a symbol of the purity of my presence in the world. It makes sense to me that I need to cover pieces of myself to preserve who I am and feel whole. I’m centered by the hijab, because it connects me to a whole set of internally held beliefs. "
13 " Even in a realm as historically dogmatic as religion, I don’t believe one size fits all. Faith is a pathway to life, but not just any life. Your life. My life. And none of us lives the same life. To wrestle with belief is to apply it within the context of your own circumstances. "
14 " My regimented food preparation was just one aspect of the environment I created in Fargo—where I was in control of everything as I saw fit. When I left Minneapolis, I was fleeing a family and culture that prescribed so many aspects of my life that I didn’t know where they ended and I began. Away from the confines of their judgments, I wanted to explore the full range of my reactions—to new people, new books, new music, new ideas. In North Dakota I found a space where for the first time in my life I was able to push all of the expectations away from my brain and focus only on what interested me. "
15 " I had suddenly discovered a great weakness I never knew I had in me. That weakness was allowing myself to mindlessly conform to family and social expectations without stopping to fully understand who I am and what my purpose is. I was the person I never imagined myself to be, the type of woman I railed against. "
16 " It was a fascinating contradiction to both stand out and completely fade into the background at the same time. But being the first is all about contradictions. "
17 " I always thought it odd when people created obstacles for themselves that got in the way of addressing an issue or being in a certain space. My guiding principle was “Do I care enough?” If so, then I didn’t care what anyone else thought about my presence in a room or conversation. "
18 " Your success and the success of others you inspire can heal your wounds. Of all the wounds I have suffered, this is the one that is most healed. Because everyday I see the system I fought against get dismantled by the people who use to feel so small but know now they too can be big. "
19 " Even when his paternal worries kick in, which I know they do, he doesn’t belittle me with protectionist admonishments. “That’s my daughter, and I’m proud of her,” he says. “She is a full being. She gets to have autonomy over her decisions and how she wants to live. "
20 " I struggled with who I was—both to myself and to those closest to me. I tried so hard to be the good daughter, the good mom, the good wife, the good friend. But I began to wonder whom I had been trying to satisfy all those years. What was I living for? It wasn’t me. I had always felt like there were five hundred eyes watching me, and every single pair was looking to see if I met their expectations of who I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to do. When I got married, the number of eyes only grew, since now my family had gotten bigger. "
