I received a free copy of from the publisher, which doesn't impact my review.

The premise of the book seems a good one, but the flow is disjointed and at times the point confusing.

Interestingly her own personal and family attitudes seem to cloud, if not contradict, her refuge attitudes. I didn't understand that to be intentional, and therefore a source of some of the confusion.

Additionally I felt the author used extreme cases to prove wrongs in cases that were called shams but offered no solutions to solve the problem of an overabundance of people trying to achieve asylum status, while in fact admitting to some of her own "shams" to get what she wanted. ( )

Who Gets Believed? by Dina Nayeri is a moving and also very enlightening book about what goes into the biases we all have. Touching on the personal and the broader societal aspects the reader is asked to look at themselves as much as at others.

This is one of those books that, while introducing plenty of new information for most readers is less about that new information and more about making us look at what we likely already know on some level. From that new perspective we can work on our own weaknesses in this area as well as work on making the bureaucracies that surround us more equitable.

The stories used to highlight and illustrate just how much we have a skewed sense of who is believable are powerful and relatable even if from a less extreme place. By that, I mean that while most of us haven't been tortured repeatedly just because we aren't being believed, we have all experienced that feeling of helplessness when we know we are telling the truth but can't convince someone else. Or how most of us have not believed someone, even someone we love, only to find out later they were telling us the truth. Or how facts can be used to tell untruths.

I came to this book looking for help with trying to make a better society. I found that help but was brought to the realization that even while working on societal issues I can also improve society by improving myself, by understanding my biases and, when I find myself not being the person I should, making adjustments to my way of thinking.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )