However, a closer look at journalistic portrayals of individuals and groups from marginalized racial identities shed light on a difficult truth: Ever since early-20th-century playwright Israel Langwill popularized the idea of “The Melting Pot,” the dominant-culture conceptualization of American identity has always meant some residents of this country have always been perceived as more American than others. The nine news media case studies in American Otherness span the first two decades of this century, bracketed by the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Covid-19 pandemic. These narratives include the news coverage of the undocumented mostly-Latino//a/x youth pursuing residency through the DREAM Act/DACA, the Barack Obama “birther” debate, the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally, the Atlanta spa shootings, and Breonna Taylor’s killing prior to the 2020 summer of protest. Building on news media research mostly constructed of single-race studies, American Otherness in Journalism: News Media Constructions of Belonging and Identity provides a new analytical vocabulary with which to understand vital and difficult issues of our time, placing them in the larger framework of historical and cultural constructions of Self and Other.

The title, The Four Words for Home, comes from the idea that in the Pashto language in Afghanistan, “home” is not a single word, but four. There are separate words to convey the concepts of “birthplace,” “native land,” “country,” and “house,” as is fitting to a people who have endured so much displacement, occupation, and upheaval.

For all immigrants, the idea of “home” is both fluid and elusive, far more than a single place on the map. At its core, this story speaks to all those who have sought that ineffable idea of home, across oceans and generations, in their own, or in other, cultures and families.