American Like Me

From award-winning actress and political activist America Ferrera comes a vibrant and varied collection of first person accounts from prominent figures about the experience of growing up between cultures.

Neela narrated three essays in the collection: Reshma Saujani, Padma Lakshmi, and Liza Koshy. Full cast of narrators includes: America Ferrera, Bambadjan Bamba, Joy Cho, Auli'I Cravalho, Tim Chiou, Janina Edwards, Jennifer Ikeda, Lameece Issaq, Eugene Kim, Jennifer Lim, Sunil Malhotra, Ramón De Ocampo, Roxana Ortega, Geena Rocero, Martin Sensmeier, Heather Alicia Simms, Neela Vaswani, and Tanaya Winder. 

America Ferrera has always felt wholly American, and yet, her identity is inextricably linked to her parents' homeland and Honduran culture. Speaking Spanish at home, having Saturday morning salsa-dance parties in the kitchen, and eating tamales alongside apple pie at Christmas never seemed at odds with her American identity.

Still, she yearned to see that identity reflected in the larger American narrative.

Now, in American Like Me, America invites 31 of her friends, peers, and heroes to share their stories about life between cultures. We know them as actors, comedians, athletes, politicians, artists, and writers. However, they are also immigrants, children or grandchildren of immigrants, indigenous people, or people who otherwise grew up with deep and personal connections to more than one culture. Each of them struggled to establish a sense of self, find belonging, and feel seen. And they call themselves American enthusiastically, reluctantly, or not at all.

Ranging from the heartfelt to the hilarious, their stories shine a light on a quintessentially American experience and will appeal to anyone with a complicated relationship to family, culture, and growing up.