However, no one could have anticipated what was to come in 2020. The chant ‘ This is what America looks like’ - in all its racial, ethnic, gender, age and ability-diverse fury - which echoed down the January 2017 Women’s March, rattled through the brain of Caroline Bock, until she persuaded the press that it was high time we published another anthology…the chant would be its writing prompt as well as its title,” publisher Kathleen Wheaton writes in her foreword. “The impulse behind this collection hasn’t been so much celebration as - let’s be honest - rage. The inspiration for the project was born out of the familiar cry heard at the myriad national protests and rallies over the last four years. Twenty-five years after publishing its last anthology, Washington Writers’ Publishing House realized now was the time to put together a collection that reflected the DMV of today. The book is at once flexing the power of a small press and honoring a particular region, which, funny enough, is something small publishers are especially adept at doing. Courageous, hopeful and defiant, her memoir is marked by her irrepressible spirit, even in the darkest of times.This Is What America Looks Likeis a collection of poems and stories by 100 authors all living in or originally from DC, Maryland, or Virginia - an area affectionately known as the DMV. In the face of merciless slander and constant attacks from opponents in both parties, Omar continues to speak up for her beliefs. This is Omar's story told on her own terms: from a childhood in Mogadishu and four long years at a Kenyan refugee camp, to her arrival in America-penniless and speaking only Somali-and her triumphant election to the US House of Representatives. 'This Is What America Looks Like' is a tale of the aspirations, disappointments, successes and surprises in the life of an immigrant and Muslim in the US today. Against a xenophobic and divisive administration, she has risen to global fame as a powerful voice in the Democratic Party's new progressive chorus of congresswomen of colour. Ilhan Omar's career is a collection of historic firsts: she is the first refugee, the first Somali-American and one of the first two Muslim women to serve in the United States Congress.

This is what america looks like