Who Gets Believed?: When the Truth Isn’t Enough

Journalist and novelist Nayeri (The Ungrateful Refugee) argues in this wide-ranging and provocative study that believability is often a matter of “performance,” and that “disbelief is the baseline” in British and American immigration courts. Weaving stories of asylum seekers, prisoners, faith-seekers, and medical patients with her own experiences as a refugee, Nayeri examines intriguing issues around the question of truth. One of the strongest stories in the book is that of the brutal torture of a Sri Lankan political prisoner, his subsequent escape to the U.K., and his struggles to convince refugee agents that his scars were evidence of torture and that he should be granted asylum. The Home Office refused to believe him, Nayeri argues, because caseworkers are prone to doubt asylum seekers. Elsewhere, she describes the disbelief and dismissal of prisoners and the poor who come to emergency rooms for medical treatment, and recounts her experiences as a child refugee from Iran and evangelical Christian in Oklahoma, and reflects on her own unwillingness to accept that her brother-in-law struggled with mental illness. Though the discussions about the mistreatment of asylum seekers and refugees are insightful, abrupt changes of subject somewhat undermine the force of Nayeri’s arguments. The result is an incisive yet scattered investigation into the nature of doubt. (Mar.)