Hooman Majd
It’s really quite simple: if you have any interest at all in how the non-Western world views America and Americans, you must read Suzy Hansen’s beautifully composed memoir Notes on a Foreign Country. And when America’s leaders complain―while campaigning and in office―that there is “great hatred” for the U.S. (and that they want to get […]
The New Yorker
Her memoir is a piercingly honest critique of the unexamined white American life.
America: The Jesuit Review
Written with compassion and a deep thirst for justice, this book is a must for anyone struggling to make sense of the rapidly changing times we live in—one in which, as much our nation’s leaders continue to assert themselves, American hegemony is being ever more called into question.
Jacobin
Hansen’s sustained self-criticism indicts the white American system itself and, in the process, does the field of journalism a great service with her humility, introspection, and willingness to defy the establishment line.
Los Angeles Review of Books
This combination of historical and political analysis combined with Hansen’s musings about her own identity create a narrative that defies categorization. While it bears traces of memoir and of travel writing, her methodology also taps into ethnography and political theory.
Los Angeles Review of Books
It would be difficult for an American reader to not feel changed by this book.
The Washington Post
… A compelling exhortation to introspection: Hansen urges Americans to recognize the perspectives that shape — and sometimes distort — how they understand their country’s role in the world … She vividly captures the disorientation we experience when our preconceived notions collide with uncomfortable discoveries … It is rare and refreshing for an observer to […]
Minneapolis StarTribune
The innocuous title of Suzy Hansen’s “Notes on a Foreign Country” offers little sense of the eloquent and impassioned prose that lies within the book’s covers.
Time
Notes on a Foreign Country is Hansen’s ardent, often lovely attempt to take self-awareness overseas … If Noam Chomsky could write like this, Hansen’s work would already be done.
The Atlantic
Hansen turns a coming-of-age travelogue into a geopolitical memoir of sorts, without sacrificing personal urgency in the process . . . Her long stay in Istanbul (she’s still there) gives her an outsider’s vantage on myopic American arrogance that is bracing. And her fascinating insider’s view of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rise upends Western simplicities . […]