This is NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Kia Miyaka-Natis. When Dina Nairi was eight years old,

she and her mother became refugees, fleeing Iran for America. In the process of applying for asylum,

the interview became young Nairi's sole focus. Would this American judge believe her family's urgent need?

They were eventually granted asylum, settling in Oklahoma.

But that question and the notion of credibility haunted Nairi.

It's at the heart of her new book, a memoir of sorts, titled Who Gets Believed?

She chats here with NPR's Wana Summers.

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Who gets believed? That's the title and central premise of Dina Nairi's new book. She told me, for

her, belief used to mean searching for the truth. But I guess I'm realizing that actually,

when we listen to believe or not believe, to assess another person's story, we're actually

looking for a familiar performance so much more than

the truth. So, you know, what does it mean to believe? I think it means to relate to someone's

familiar performance of their truth. In her search for an answer to who is afforded belief,

Nairi charts the stories of vulnerable populations, asylum seekers, traumatized people, criminal suspects. And she does

all this through the lens of her own refugee experience. See, Nairi was born in Iran in 1979.

After her mother converted to Christianity, it became unsafe for them to live there. So when Nayari was eight years old,

she, her mother, and her younger brother fled from Iran and began the long process of applying

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