The Lies We Tell For America
COMING NOVEMBER 10, 2026
A brilliant, piercing, and funny exploration following one woman’s journey in navigating the fraught higher education system during the pandemic as an international student.
In 2019, Ber Anena, a writer from Uganda, opened up her email and was enthusiastic to find that she’d been accepted into Columbia University’s prestigious MFA writing program. Then, reality struck: it would cost approximately $150,000 in tuition and fees alone for the two-year program, with no additional support for funding.
“If you counted my family’s wealth going ten generations back, you would not find that money, even if you included my mama’s ducks or Ma’s pigeons and goats.”
The Lies We Tell for America is equal parts incandescent and uncompromising as Anena uncovers the lengths students from “shithole countries” go through to seek an education in the West. Studying in the United States quickly morphs from an ideal to an ordeal as she scrambles to secure funding, leaving the security of her stable income, apartment, and family in Uganda for the great uncertainty abroad.
In New York, the picturesque version Anena grew up with quickly diminishes. From maneuvering icy roommates, to grappling with food insecurity, to calling out racism in her writing workshops, Anena begins to rewrite the narrative she had once accepted. These strikingly beautiful pages lay bare Anena’s own cultural assumptions, while shining light on a particular kind of migrant experience. After everything—was taking this plunge worth it?
The Lies We Tell for America is an essential read from a remarkable new voice in literature.
PRAISE
“With a voice utterly her own—full of desire, humor, vulnerability, and deep wisdom—Ber Anena tells the extraordinary story of her journey as a writer, from growing up in the midst of a civil war to struggling through the financial and emotional tribulations of the Ivy League. Every page of this singular Kunstlerroman glimmers with careful attention to the ways our biggest truths—the complexities of intimacy, isolation, dislocation, and desire—live inside the smallest moments of our days. Ber Anena is a daughter of Acoli and a storyteller for the ages. Her story will stay with me for good.” —Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams
“A sharply observant memoir, full of candor and warmth and humor, with an unforgettably vivid storyteller at the center. The details are astute, the social insights shrewd. I loved it.” —Phillip Lopate, author of To Show and To Tell
“The Lies We Tell for America is a strong debut by a keen and astute observer of different cultures and modes of being in a time when such insight is sorely needed.” —Morgan Jerkins, New York Times bestselling author of This Will Be My Undoing