Jabeen Akhtar’s debut novel Welcome to Americastan is a comedic story about

September 29, 2025 admin 0 Comments

Jabeen Akhtar’s debut novel Welcome to Americastan is a comedic story about a Pakistani American girl named Samira (“Sam”) who returns to her parents’ home in Cary, North Carolina, after a series of unfortunate events forces her to leave her life in Washington, DC. The book navigates through Samira’s tenuous relationship with her parents due to cultural differences, touching on what it means to be a South Asian American in post-9/11 America.

Published in 2011 by Penguin Books India, Welcome to Americastan has been described as “fresh and original” and “quirky.” Akhtar, a former government employee who spent years writing environmental regulations, wrote an incendiary essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books entitled “Why Am I Brown? South Asian Fiction and Pandering to Western Audiences.”