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The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives
In January 2017, Donald Trump signed an executive order stopping entry to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries and dramatically cutting the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the United States each year. The American people spoke up, with protests, marches, donations, and lawsuits that quickly overturned the order. But the refugee caps remained.
In The Displaced, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, himself a refugee, brings together a host of prominent refugee writers to explore and illuminate the refugee experience. Featuring original essays by a collection of writers from around the world, The Displaced is an indictment of closing our doors, and a powerful look at what it means to be forced to leave home and find a place of refuge.
In The Displaced, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, himself a refugee, brings together a host of prominent refugee writers to explore and illuminate the refugee experience. Featuring original essays by a collection of writers from around the world, The Displaced is an indictment of closing our doors, and a powerful look at what it means to be forced to leave home and find a place of refuge.
210 pages, Hardcover
First published April 10, 2018
About the author
Viet Thanh Nguyen
37 books5,283 followersViet Thanh Nguyen is the author of the novel The Sympathizer (Grove Press, 2015). He also authored Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America (Oxford University Press, 2002) and co-edited Transpacific Studies: Framing an Emerging Field (University of Hawaii Press, 2014). An associate professor at the University of Southern California, he teaches in the departments of English and American Studies and Ethnicity.
He has been a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies (2011-2012), the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard (2008-2009) and the Fine Arts Work Center (2004-2005). He has also received residencies, fellowships, and grants from the Luce Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, the James Irvine Foundation, the Huntington Library, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Creative Capital and the Warhol Foundation.
His short fiction has been published in Manoa, Best New American Voices 2007, A Stranger Among Us: Stories of Cross-Cultural Collision and Connection, Narrative Magazine, TriQuarterly, the Chicago Tribune, and Gulf Coast, where his story won the 2007 Fiction Prize.
His writing has been translated into Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Spanish, and he has given invited lectures in China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Germany. He is finishing an academic book titled War, Memory, Identity.
He has been a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies (2011-2012), the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard (2008-2009) and the Fine Arts Work Center (2004-2005). He has also received residencies, fellowships, and grants from the Luce Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, the James Irvine Foundation, the Huntington Library, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Creative Capital and the Warhol Foundation.
His short fiction has been published in Manoa, Best New American Voices 2007, A Stranger Among Us: Stories of Cross-Cultural Collision and Connection, Narrative Magazine, TriQuarterly, the Chicago Tribune, and Gulf Coast, where his story won the 2007 Fiction Prize.
His writing has been translated into Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Spanish, and he has given invited lectures in China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Germany. He is finishing an academic book titled War, Memory, Identity.
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May 13, 2021books like this one remind me why we read.
doesn't seem right to rate or review this one. just read it.
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taking lily's idea and reading only books by asian authors this month!
book 1: the incendiaries
book 2: last night at the telegraph club
book 3: dear girls
book 4: sigh, gone
book 5: frankly in love
book 6: emergency contact
book 7: your house will pay
book 8: convenience store woman
book 9: on earth we're briefly gorgeous
book 10: we are not free
book 11: searching for sylvie lee
book 12: the displaced
doesn't seem right to rate or review this one. just read it.
------------
taking lily's idea and reading only books by asian authors this month!
book 1: the incendiaries
book 2: last night at the telegraph club
book 3: dear girls
book 4: sigh, gone
book 5: frankly in love
book 6: emergency contact
book 7: your house will pay
book 8: convenience store woman
book 9: on earth we're briefly gorgeous
book 10: we are not free
book 11: searching for sylvie lee
book 12: the displaced
April 28, 2018
If I were going to recommend a book, this is the ONE. I found myself choking with so much emotion while reading some of these stories. I don’t pretend that I know what the authors shared and revealed. I can only speak to the power of stories to touch me deeply and to make me care about someone else—and to some extent, about their pain and confusion, and to feel that across time and on the page.
Several stories linger in my heart and mind. Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Introduction is quite poignant. “The Parent Who Stays” absolutely devastated me. Just WOW! And, I very much appreciated “Last, First, Middle,” “Guests of the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa,” “God’s Fate,” “This is What the Journey Does,” and “A Refugee Again.” These stories and tellings felt so intimate, so vulnerable.
A few quotes:
“The drastic images which make newsreels create the impression that people turn into refugees overnight. In my family’s experience, that isn’t true. Becoming a refugee is a gradual process, a bleaching out, a transition into a ghostly existence. With the exception of those born in refugee camps, every refugee used to have a life. It doesn’t matter whether you were a physician in Bosnia or a goat herder in the Congo: what matters is that a thousand little anchors once moored you to the world. Becoming a refugee means watching as those anchors are severed, one by one, until at last you’re floating outside of society, an untethered phantom in need of a new life.” (Golinkin)
“What actually happened was that we learned what they wanted, the hidden switch to make them stop simmering. After all, these Americans had never thought we were terrorists or Islamic fundamentalists or violent criminals. From the start, they knew we were a Christian family that had escaped those very horrors. And they, as a Protestant community, had accepted us, rescued us. But there were unspoken conditions to our acceptance, and that was the secret we were meant to glean on our own: we had to be grateful. The hate wasn’t about being darker, or from elsewhere. It was about being those things and daring to be unaware of it. As refugees, we owed them our previous identity. We had to lay it at their door like an offering, and gleefully deny it to earn our place in this new country. There would be no straddling. No third culture here.” (Nayeri)
“The refugee has to be less capable than the native, needier; he must stay in his place. That’s the only way gratitude will be accepted. Once he escapes control, he confirms his identity as the devil. All day I wondered, has this been true in my own experience? If so, then why all the reverence for the refugees who succeed against the odds, the heartwarming success stories? And that possibly it—one can go around in the circle forever, because it contains no internal logic. You’re not enough until you’re too much. You’re lazy until you’re a greedy interloper... Their silence makes me angry but I understand why they don’t want to commit to any point of view. Who knows what their universe looks like outside my classroom, what sentiments they’re expected to display in order to be inside. Still, I want to show those kids whose very limbs apologize for the space they occupy, and my own daughter, who has yet to feel any shame or remorse, that a grateful face isn’t the one they should assume at times like these. Instead they should tune their voices and polish their stories, because the world is duller without them—even more so if they arrived as refugees.” (Nayeri)
“…I am ever working, overworking, because I’m aware of the potential, as a non-white body and passport holder from “Africa,” without the safety of “being at home,” of my easy disposal from the political imagination of the world. The suffering of non-white bodies is so naturalized, so overwhelming, and so ordinary that it ceases to be exceptional. Thus, the price for escaping that ever-threatening potential of being reduced, under the glare of the sovereign power of the host country, to a more biological fact of life, is a tireless pursuit of exceptionalism. It is an implicit understanding that only through exceptionalism can one “earn” one’s place in the new society, earn one’s right to the humanity in which, for those in their proper place, is normal. Exceptionalism, then, is really an aspiration toward safety, human rights, access to food, to water, to resources, to an edifying life, to the free pursuit of one’s endeavors, to support from the state.” (Tshuma)
Several stories linger in my heart and mind. Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Introduction is quite poignant. “The Parent Who Stays” absolutely devastated me. Just WOW! And, I very much appreciated “Last, First, Middle,” “Guests of the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa,” “God’s Fate,” “This is What the Journey Does,” and “A Refugee Again.” These stories and tellings felt so intimate, so vulnerable.
A few quotes:
“The drastic images which make newsreels create the impression that people turn into refugees overnight. In my family’s experience, that isn’t true. Becoming a refugee is a gradual process, a bleaching out, a transition into a ghostly existence. With the exception of those born in refugee camps, every refugee used to have a life. It doesn’t matter whether you were a physician in Bosnia or a goat herder in the Congo: what matters is that a thousand little anchors once moored you to the world. Becoming a refugee means watching as those anchors are severed, one by one, until at last you’re floating outside of society, an untethered phantom in need of a new life.” (Golinkin)
“What actually happened was that we learned what they wanted, the hidden switch to make them stop simmering. After all, these Americans had never thought we were terrorists or Islamic fundamentalists or violent criminals. From the start, they knew we were a Christian family that had escaped those very horrors. And they, as a Protestant community, had accepted us, rescued us. But there were unspoken conditions to our acceptance, and that was the secret we were meant to glean on our own: we had to be grateful. The hate wasn’t about being darker, or from elsewhere. It was about being those things and daring to be unaware of it. As refugees, we owed them our previous identity. We had to lay it at their door like an offering, and gleefully deny it to earn our place in this new country. There would be no straddling. No third culture here.” (Nayeri)
“The refugee has to be less capable than the native, needier; he must stay in his place. That’s the only way gratitude will be accepted. Once he escapes control, he confirms his identity as the devil. All day I wondered, has this been true in my own experience? If so, then why all the reverence for the refugees who succeed against the odds, the heartwarming success stories? And that possibly it—one can go around in the circle forever, because it contains no internal logic. You’re not enough until you’re too much. You’re lazy until you’re a greedy interloper... Their silence makes me angry but I understand why they don’t want to commit to any point of view. Who knows what their universe looks like outside my classroom, what sentiments they’re expected to display in order to be inside. Still, I want to show those kids whose very limbs apologize for the space they occupy, and my own daughter, who has yet to feel any shame or remorse, that a grateful face isn’t the one they should assume at times like these. Instead they should tune their voices and polish their stories, because the world is duller without them—even more so if they arrived as refugees.” (Nayeri)
“…I am ever working, overworking, because I’m aware of the potential, as a non-white body and passport holder from “Africa,” without the safety of “being at home,” of my easy disposal from the political imagination of the world. The suffering of non-white bodies is so naturalized, so overwhelming, and so ordinary that it ceases to be exceptional. Thus, the price for escaping that ever-threatening potential of being reduced, under the glare of the sovereign power of the host country, to a more biological fact of life, is a tireless pursuit of exceptionalism. It is an implicit understanding that only through exceptionalism can one “earn” one’s place in the new society, earn one’s right to the humanity in which, for those in their proper place, is normal. Exceptionalism, then, is really an aspiration toward safety, human rights, access to food, to water, to resources, to an edifying life, to the free pursuit of one’s endeavors, to support from the state.” (Tshuma)
January 26, 2020
This collection of stories from prominent writers and public figures is a brilliant dissection and exploration of what it means to be a refugees it all of its guises; from Raja who feels like a refugee in his own country following the annexation of Palestine by Israel, to Dina who feels weighed down my the perpetual pressure to be grateful to her hosts irrespective of how she is treated, to the tragic tale of Kemal who is left rootless, both in terms of his place in the world but also in his own society following the Bosnian worms. Indeed the common thread which runs through all of these novels is the sense of rootlessness engendered by becoming a refugee-race, nationality and gender are rendered irrelevant by the irrevocable loss of identity which refugees feel. The second common theme is that no story is ever the same. In the West, there is a tendency to assign refugees which homogeneous labels and identities, when all they are is people who require our support because circumstances outside their control have rendered them powerless. We also have a tendency to homogenise their internal stories, whereby one refugees represents them all, with no real attempt to reflect that they are just individuals, both good and bad, each with their own stories. The feeling which inspires this is fear; after all refugees represent our greatest fear about losing everything important to us and becoming rootless and that we could become so through no fault of our own and at the whim of self-serving state or ignoble dictator, thereby perpetuating the sense of otherness which is so often attributed to refugees.
This collection of stories is important not just because it represents the tragic and often miraculous stories of dislocated refugees from around the world, but also because it engenders a sense of humanity and pathos for the plight of refugees across the world, a pathos which is essential if we wish to continue to give refugees all of the help and support they need and deserve.
This collection of stories is important not just because it represents the tragic and often miraculous stories of dislocated refugees from around the world, but also because it engenders a sense of humanity and pathos for the plight of refugees across the world, a pathos which is essential if we wish to continue to give refugees all of the help and support they need and deserve.
January 12, 2018
Powerful and moving. I read the sampler that includes ten essays. The final book will have a total of 20 essays. All royalties will be donated to the International Rescue Committee. Full review to come.
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I received this book (PDF) for free from NetGalley and ABRAMS. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. It will be available on April 10, 2018.
_____________
I received this book (PDF) for free from NetGalley and ABRAMS. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. It will be available on April 10, 2018.
June 27, 2020
An excellent collection of essays about refugees by refugees, and extremely relevant in these turbulent times.
Proceeds from sales are donated to the IRC (International Rescue Committee).
I have always preferred the word "refugee" to "immigrant" myself. There's something urgent and immediate about the sound of refugee, whereas immigrant sounds more sanitized, more wholesome. Immigrant is what you see on clean official documents, if you're one of the lucky few; refugee is the reality of refugee camps and escaping a hometown that's been decimated, knowing you can never go back. When spoken aloud, refugee paints a more desperate picture, and it's always been one that's closest to my existence, so I prefer it. And Professor Viet is on the same page, but he's much, much better at expressing his sentiments.
A big thanks to Goodreads giveaways and ABRAMS books for sending me an advanced reader's copy, which I have loaned to friends and coworkers. Summaries and direct quotes will be added when my copy arrives in a few weeks.
Proceeds from sales are donated to the IRC (International Rescue Committee).
I have always preferred the word "refugee" to "immigrant" myself. There's something urgent and immediate about the sound of refugee, whereas immigrant sounds more sanitized, more wholesome. Immigrant is what you see on clean official documents, if you're one of the lucky few; refugee is the reality of refugee camps and escaping a hometown that's been decimated, knowing you can never go back. When spoken aloud, refugee paints a more desperate picture, and it's always been one that's closest to my existence, so I prefer it. And Professor Viet is on the same page, but he's much, much better at expressing his sentiments.
A big thanks to Goodreads giveaways and ABRAMS books for sending me an advanced reader's copy, which I have loaned to friends and coworkers. Summaries and direct quotes will be added when my copy arrives in a few weeks.
March 22, 2018
We’re facing a crisis of empathy when it comes to speaking about displacement, migration, and borders. The Displaced is a moving and timely collection of essays that explores these ideas through the experiences of 20 authors, spanning decades and the globe.
I’m a huge fan of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s work, The Sympathizer and short story collection The Refugees being two of my favourite books. I have worked for the International Rescue Committee, the organization receiving donations from sales of The Displaced, and currently work with a community-based organization out of Portland (Refugee Assistance and Information Network International, check us out!). I’ve been waiting for this book since I heard it was in the works, and I can’t speak highly enough of the way that the writers challenge the nativist and bigoted narratives about refugees and “economic migrants.” In particular, I’ve reread Dina Nayeri’s “The Ungrateful Refugee” several times already. It’s searing and gets to heart of the power dynamics inherent in how we talk about and conceive of the right to move and seek safety.
I’m traveling to Buffalo to see Viet Thanh Nguyen speak at a Just Buffalo Literary Center event tomorrow night, and I’m really looking forward to it. We need more voices like his and the authors in this book amplified right now, and I strongly recommend The Displaced for nuanced and beautiful takes on the refugee experience, narrated by refugees themselves.
Disclaimer: I received an advance copy through a Goodreads giveaway from ABRAMS. It contained 10 of the final 20 essays. This has not affected my review— promise.
I’m a huge fan of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s work, The Sympathizer and short story collection The Refugees being two of my favourite books. I have worked for the International Rescue Committee, the organization receiving donations from sales of The Displaced, and currently work with a community-based organization out of Portland (Refugee Assistance and Information Network International, check us out!). I’ve been waiting for this book since I heard it was in the works, and I can’t speak highly enough of the way that the writers challenge the nativist and bigoted narratives about refugees and “economic migrants.” In particular, I’ve reread Dina Nayeri’s “The Ungrateful Refugee” several times already. It’s searing and gets to heart of the power dynamics inherent in how we talk about and conceive of the right to move and seek safety.
I’m traveling to Buffalo to see Viet Thanh Nguyen speak at a Just Buffalo Literary Center event tomorrow night, and I’m really looking forward to it. We need more voices like his and the authors in this book amplified right now, and I strongly recommend The Displaced for nuanced and beautiful takes on the refugee experience, narrated by refugees themselves.
Disclaimer: I received an advance copy through a Goodreads giveaway from ABRAMS. It contained 10 of the final 20 essays. This has not affected my review— promise.
July 21, 2018
Some seriously powerful stuff going on here!
April 7, 2019
This is a phenomenal book that I loved from start to finish and I can honestly say that I think this a vital piece of work that everyone should read. I was so impressed and moved by each and every essay that I immediately felt the urge to share it with as many people as possible. From Syria to Ethiopia to Vietnam, we hear a variety of voices of refugees who are relating their experiences of leaving their home country to find refuge elsewhere and the subsequent trauma they are still dealing and coming to terms with. It’s incredibly powerful and important to hear these stories and perspectives, especially in this current climate where refugees are demonised and reduced to a faceless, homogenous mass that poses a threat to our society. It was heartbreaking to read about everything these people have sacrificed and lost in order to be safe and find a better life, and these stories will stay with me forever.
June 22, 2018
I like learning about other people's experiences. I admire each refugee who shared their story for their strength and determination, and they have all given me something to think about when encountering refugees. I want to recognize them and their experiences and not make feel like they are second class citizens. They have something to contribute to the world just as much as I do.
April 14, 2022
So I have to confess something that I realized when I picked up this book. Hopefully I can explain this without sounding too terrible, but I noticed that I had a kind of "refugee trope" in my head, where I expected a sort of 3-act structure for stories about refugee's, e.g. Act 1. suffering in country of origin, Act. 2 perilous journey Act 3. Struggle to fit in and find acceptance in new country.
Now that is nothing like the tales presented here. In fact this book almost acted as s debunking of the stereotyped experience I had in my head. For example the first story examined the author's experience of changing their name to suit their new country and some of the weird and difficult moments this caused.
Similarly confronting many of the authors described the odd and unusual experiences they've had that don't necessarily fit molds - one devastating story of a family separated by immigration explained wounds that never healed while their parents still lived. Some authors had moved with their parents before conscious memory and thusly had strained identities, one author earnestly explained the experience of returning to their country of origin and finding themselves out of place there as well.
So in summary this was a very useful read on many levels. It wasn't tropey or exploitative of people's suffering it was hugely insightful and helped me confront ideas about countryhood and refugee status in a way that made me think more deeply. The stories are all digestible in size and while I wouldn't claim such a heavy topic was good for regular easy reading, the format does mean you can pick up and put down this book over a long period without losing anything.
Given where the world is at in 2022 and what might be heading our way with climate and inequality crisis this is a pretty important and relevant read, highly recommended and commended
Now that is nothing like the tales presented here. In fact this book almost acted as s debunking of the stereotyped experience I had in my head. For example the first story examined the author's experience of changing their name to suit their new country and some of the weird and difficult moments this caused.
Similarly confronting many of the authors described the odd and unusual experiences they've had that don't necessarily fit molds - one devastating story of a family separated by immigration explained wounds that never healed while their parents still lived. Some authors had moved with their parents before conscious memory and thusly had strained identities, one author earnestly explained the experience of returning to their country of origin and finding themselves out of place there as well.
So in summary this was a very useful read on many levels. It wasn't tropey or exploitative of people's suffering it was hugely insightful and helped me confront ideas about countryhood and refugee status in a way that made me think more deeply. The stories are all digestible in size and while I wouldn't claim such a heavy topic was good for regular easy reading, the format does mean you can pick up and put down this book over a long period without losing anything.
Given where the world is at in 2022 and what might be heading our way with climate and inequality crisis this is a pretty important and relevant read, highly recommended and commended
July 17, 2020
This is not a book for feeling comfortable about one's beliefs and experiences, but it is an important book for empathy-building. I think most Americans would have something to think about as they read it, since many of our ancestors will have experienced similar feelings of outsider-ness when they arrived on US shores. Although most would have been economic migrants rather than asylum seekers or refugees of war, there's a lot to be learned about the human condition as we read about the movement of people around the globe, and its impact on individuals.
I found every story extremely compelling; I read most of them twice, and plan to read the whole book again. I had my reasons for this explained to me by Viet Thanh Nguyen in his introduction: "Many writers, perhaps most writers or even all writers, are people who do not feel completely at home. They are used to being people who are out of place, who are emotionally or psychically or socially displaced to one degree or another, at one time or another...I cannot help but suspect that it is from this displacement that writers come into being, and why so many writers have sympathy and empathy for those who are displaced in one way or another, whether it is the lonely social misfit or whether it is the millions rendered homeless by forces beyond their control."
Read it, especially if you're not sympathetic to the people who are trying to get themselves and their loved ones somewhere safer than where they are. If you're not moved by these stories, if your understanding doesn't increase even somewhat, then you are a hard case indeed.
I found every story extremely compelling; I read most of them twice, and plan to read the whole book again. I had my reasons for this explained to me by Viet Thanh Nguyen in his introduction: "Many writers, perhaps most writers or even all writers, are people who do not feel completely at home. They are used to being people who are out of place, who are emotionally or psychically or socially displaced to one degree or another, at one time or another...I cannot help but suspect that it is from this displacement that writers come into being, and why so many writers have sympathy and empathy for those who are displaced in one way or another, whether it is the lonely social misfit or whether it is the millions rendered homeless by forces beyond their control."
Read it, especially if you're not sympathetic to the people who are trying to get themselves and their loved ones somewhere safer than where they are. If you're not moved by these stories, if your understanding doesn't increase even somewhat, then you are a hard case indeed.
June 15, 2018
I feel that in order to better empathize with the plight of others, we must bear witness to their suffering and not turn a blind eye.
This novel offers us short stories from refugees hailing from various parts of the globe - Vietnam, then Yugoslavia, Russia, Afghanistan, Iran, Mexico, Central America, and parts of Africa.
I am amazed that there have been so many countries and parts of the world plagued with war, death, relocation, poverty, loss... all on their home soil.
Why does the global community just sit by and do nothing? Then refugees come to their 'borders' and they want nothing to do with them. I will never understand people's lack of compassion in this regard.
One of the authors mentioned how their refugee parents are conservative (and light skinned/white passing) and they don't see how Muslims and people from Syria, etc are the same as them - going through the same experiences they have. They don't want the refugees to come in. I found that fascinating how someone can just overlook and forget their past. It's quite remarkable.
I highly recommend this novel. The authors bare their souls to the world, the least we can do is listen.
This novel offers us short stories from refugees hailing from various parts of the globe - Vietnam, then Yugoslavia, Russia, Afghanistan, Iran, Mexico, Central America, and parts of Africa.
I am amazed that there have been so many countries and parts of the world plagued with war, death, relocation, poverty, loss... all on their home soil.
Why does the global community just sit by and do nothing? Then refugees come to their 'borders' and they want nothing to do with them. I will never understand people's lack of compassion in this regard.
One of the authors mentioned how their refugee parents are conservative (and light skinned/white passing) and they don't see how Muslims and people from Syria, etc are the same as them - going through the same experiences they have. They don't want the refugees to come in. I found that fascinating how someone can just overlook and forget their past. It's quite remarkable.
I highly recommend this novel. The authors bare their souls to the world, the least we can do is listen.
April 2, 2021
I have been following Viet Thanh Nguyen on Twitter for some time and have read a couple of essays by him on the New Yorker. This book which is edited by him is a great piece of refugee authors making their cases against the Model Minority Myth,how progressives often fall for the anti-refugee/anti-immigrant rhetoric by employing a mellow version, invisibility as a crucial part of a refugee’s identity and the global tendency that is seeking to push compassion to the sideline with a profit-oriented logic. Writers of this collection are usually very accomplished writers and most of the essays draw on personal experiences and tie those to an existential circumstance. Very informative!
May 2, 2018
This book was surprisingly enjoyable and thoughtful. It is a collection of short writings by refugee writers about their lives as refugees. This goes beyond considerations of immigration and emigration to one’s identity as a refugee and the experience of seeking refuge. The editor Nguyen has focused on refugee writers for whom coming to grips with their identities as refugees was central to their coming of age as writers and honing both their skills and their messages. No single particular passage is emphasized and the selection of entries gives testimony to the range of contemporary refugee experiences and the vast numbers of refugees making their way in the world on all the major continents, although many selections involve passages to the US.
The selections are uniformly thoughtful and readable. While I frequently read about refugees, I was unfamiliar with refugee literature, with exceptions of such books as Exit West. This book is a fine collection and gives lots of clues for where to go next in picking a book. I will also confess an awkwardness in reading about the experiences of these people, due to the sheer impossibility of gaining access to their experiences or appreciating how they view the host nations that simultaneously love and hate them - that in one moment welcome them and then push them away. I can try to empathize but I also know what I do not know. Still, it does not hurt to keep reading and talking to people.
It is impossible to read this collection without considering the nativism that has recently come to engulf both the US and Europe (again). The writers occasionally mention Trump - how could they not? This is not a book about politics however, at least not directly. Still it is impossible to read this collection and not feel for the refugees and also think hard about what lousy hosts we sometimes become. I did not expect to have such a reaction from this collection.
The selections are uniformly thoughtful and readable. While I frequently read about refugees, I was unfamiliar with refugee literature, with exceptions of such books as Exit West. This book is a fine collection and gives lots of clues for where to go next in picking a book. I will also confess an awkwardness in reading about the experiences of these people, due to the sheer impossibility of gaining access to their experiences or appreciating how they view the host nations that simultaneously love and hate them - that in one moment welcome them and then push them away. I can try to empathize but I also know what I do not know. Still, it does not hurt to keep reading and talking to people.
It is impossible to read this collection without considering the nativism that has recently come to engulf both the US and Europe (again). The writers occasionally mention Trump - how could they not? This is not a book about politics however, at least not directly. Still it is impossible to read this collection and not feel for the refugees and also think hard about what lousy hosts we sometimes become. I did not expect to have such a reaction from this collection.
May 28, 2018
It's doubtful that few people other than refugees can truly know the feeling of permanently forsaking their home country, but some idea can be gleaned from the pages of this book. The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives consists of essays of various writers who fled their homelands in search of a new existence. The editing is by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanah Nguyen, who was born in Vietnam before the fall of South Vietnam in 1971.
Each story is a unique perspective. You would expect political views from the contributors in such a compilation, and there is no disappointment in that regard, Ariel Dorfman's essay being a prime example. This novelist and playwright feels that President Donald Trump's battle to build a wall along the southern U.S. border has been lost. While mulling over that opinion, consider the fact that one of many hats worn by this Buenos Aires, Argentina native is that of human rights activist.
I found the collection of interest in light of the fact that my wife has been a United States immigrant for more than 40 years. Having heard her voice the emotions of becoming a naturalized citizen, it was easy to relate to some of the stories in this book. One essay tells of an Indian man who was very emotional at his naturalization ceremony. After finishing his pledge of allegiance to the U.S. he shouted into the mic, “I'M AN AMERICAN! FINALLY I AM AN AMERICAN!”
It's important to understand and empathize with our fellow humans who have migrated to a strange land. Many did so just to be in a place where they no longer must endure the kind of hardship we may find hard to fathom. While the ways they got here may sometimes be open for debate, all of the refugees have human stories to convey. Nguyen is to be praised for his effort to allow some of these people to contribute their worthwhile and thoughtful reads.
Each story is a unique perspective. You would expect political views from the contributors in such a compilation, and there is no disappointment in that regard, Ariel Dorfman's essay being a prime example. This novelist and playwright feels that President Donald Trump's battle to build a wall along the southern U.S. border has been lost. While mulling over that opinion, consider the fact that one of many hats worn by this Buenos Aires, Argentina native is that of human rights activist.
I found the collection of interest in light of the fact that my wife has been a United States immigrant for more than 40 years. Having heard her voice the emotions of becoming a naturalized citizen, it was easy to relate to some of the stories in this book. One essay tells of an Indian man who was very emotional at his naturalization ceremony. After finishing his pledge of allegiance to the U.S. he shouted into the mic, “I'M AN AMERICAN! FINALLY I AM AN AMERICAN!”
It's important to understand and empathize with our fellow humans who have migrated to a strange land. Many did so just to be in a place where they no longer must endure the kind of hardship we may find hard to fathom. While the ways they got here may sometimes be open for debate, all of the refugees have human stories to convey. Nguyen is to be praised for his effort to allow some of these people to contribute their worthwhile and thoughtful reads.
September 18, 2019
Does a person who has been a refugee ever stop being a refugee? Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen and many of the writers in this book he edited ask that question. Some felt that they were no longer refugees, then came to feel that they still were, in part because that is how others saw them.
Keeping people in a refugee camp is unjust, Nguyen writes. It is imprisoning them though they have committed no crime. He calls for a more just world, world without borders.
Most of the refugees in this book live in the United States, but others have experienced injustice as refugees in countries like South Africa and Thailand. The writers come from countries ranging from the Ukraine to Bosnia, from to Vietnam to Afghanistan, and from Chile to Iran. Most feel a tie to their parents' homeland, even if they never lived there or lived there only as children. Sometimes that tie has been imposed on them by the gaze of others. Many have fled unspeakable violence.
They feel like refugees, but resist classification as refugee, as other. Pitying them makes them into others. It limits them.
They feel for others who have undergone similar experience. Fatima Bhutto, whose prominent family experienced murder and persecution in Pakistan, went through a virtual reality experience in Italy based on the experiences of people trying to cross the Mexican desert to the United States. The experience left her shaken. I read about those experiences, but I don't know that I'd be brave enough to go through the virtual reality simulation. Yet many thousands of people have gone through the real thing and still are.
This book cries out against dehumanization. it is essential reading in a world where 70 million people are displaced.
Keeping people in a refugee camp is unjust, Nguyen writes. It is imprisoning them though they have committed no crime. He calls for a more just world, world without borders.
Most of the refugees in this book live in the United States, but others have experienced injustice as refugees in countries like South Africa and Thailand. The writers come from countries ranging from the Ukraine to Bosnia, from to Vietnam to Afghanistan, and from Chile to Iran. Most feel a tie to their parents' homeland, even if they never lived there or lived there only as children. Sometimes that tie has been imposed on them by the gaze of others. Many have fled unspeakable violence.
They feel like refugees, but resist classification as refugee, as other. Pitying them makes them into others. It limits them.
They feel for others who have undergone similar experience. Fatima Bhutto, whose prominent family experienced murder and persecution in Pakistan, went through a virtual reality experience in Italy based on the experiences of people trying to cross the Mexican desert to the United States. The experience left her shaken. I read about those experiences, but I don't know that I'd be brave enough to go through the virtual reality simulation. Yet many thousands of people have gone through the real thing and still are.
This book cries out against dehumanization. it is essential reading in a world where 70 million people are displaced.
May 3, 2018
Viet Thanh Nguyen serves as editor for a short but impactful collection of essays about refugees and the refugee experience. I read a lot about immigration. I'm not entirely unaware that many of these stories are actually about refugees, but it's interesting that people often morph themselves into "immigrants," when in fact most of our families came from a refugee experience at some point. My father's family came in dribs and drabs to both coasts (and ended up with numerous spellings of our last name) because of the potato famine in Ireland. Nobody calls our family "refugees" but they were. It was just an easier time to be that when they showed up and pretended to have degrees in things like medicine... (true, but much too long a, story) So, given all of that, it's a willful political act for these writers to reclaim the identity of refugee -- especially given their successes and acceptance now in their new homes.
The tragedy is how these new homes forced people in a variety of ways to deny their original national identities. Some are more obvious than others, but all carry an almost unexplainable burden to the individuals, and I'm pretty sure to their new countries as well.
Many, but not all, of the writers are now living in the US, and all of them are successful, educated, prize-winning, feted authors. Interesting how willing countries are to claim these refugees now that they have proven their worth. They've come from all over the world and they have personal experiences that frequently left me tearing up. The overall effect is rather devastating. I'm not going to review each piece, because they are all worth reading more than once.
The tragedy is how these new homes forced people in a variety of ways to deny their original national identities. Some are more obvious than others, but all carry an almost unexplainable burden to the individuals, and I'm pretty sure to their new countries as well.
Many, but not all, of the writers are now living in the US, and all of them are successful, educated, prize-winning, feted authors. Interesting how willing countries are to claim these refugees now that they have proven their worth. They've come from all over the world and they have personal experiences that frequently left me tearing up. The overall effect is rather devastating. I'm not going to review each piece, because they are all worth reading more than once.
September 2, 2021
"Each displacement is a tale"
In my opinion, there's one thing that these stories have in common: they show that the experience you gain from travelling is the exact opposite as the one created by the displacement. They're both movement experiences, although one of them enriches you while the other one dispossesses you, from your identity, your singularity, your humanity.
Luckily these stories get to be shared, countering the mainstream narratives offered by medias and politicians, reminding us that behind each words composing a news item, there is an individual for whom the words are a world, while we scroll to the next tweet.
Highly recommended read.
In my opinion, there's one thing that these stories have in common: they show that the experience you gain from travelling is the exact opposite as the one created by the displacement. They're both movement experiences, although one of them enriches you while the other one dispossesses you, from your identity, your singularity, your humanity.
Luckily these stories get to be shared, countering the mainstream narratives offered by medias and politicians, reminding us that behind each words composing a news item, there is an individual for whom the words are a world, while we scroll to the next tweet.
Highly recommended read.
November 19, 2021
Awesome quick read. A collection of short essays which explain the varied outcomes and emotions of refugees in new and unfamiliar countries. 19 different perspectives allow you to understand fully, how difficult and traumatic this process can be. I appreciated learning about their experiences.
February 10, 2019
It’s hard to find words for this book. It’s beautiful but heartbreaking, inspiring but enraging. This book reminded me that I most love reading when reading helps me learn because it’s one of those books that smacks me in the face with how ignorant I am and how little I know about lives different from my own. The stories here are varied but all compelling, and I cannot recommend them highly enough.
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June 2, 2021This was a really interesting collection. Some beautiful writing and storytelling, even if it's heartbreaking at times. The really interesting part was how each writer approached the premise of writing about being a refugee. They all had really different stories, coming from different countries at different times under different circumstances, but they also just all had varying ideas of how to write about it. It's hard to rate this kind of thing, but I think it's worth a read.
January 4, 2022
“The journey is designed to test the body’s resilience. Its intent is to break a human being and rearrange them inside. Every inch forward is a reminder of one’s frailty. You do not arrive the same as when you left. You will sometimes look at a stranger and recognize yourself reflected in that new life: impossibly alive, walking through the lingering flow of a splendid sun while trying to spin free of a permanent darkness.”
Reading experiences from migrants and refugees over the years has changed so many aspects of my beliefs and emotions when viewing the world. Always for the better. I think consuming works that share an experience in the world unlike your own is essential to living.
Reading experiences from migrants and refugees over the years has changed so many aspects of my beliefs and emotions when viewing the world. Always for the better. I think consuming works that share an experience in the world unlike your own is essential to living.
January 10, 2024
must read!
May 16, 2024
Such a powerful book, so many impactful stories. You have to read it yourself to truly understand just how special this book and each individual story is.
June 25, 2023
Tragically poetic, so many talented authors. One of the authors we had read about in my political violence class last year so it was so interesting to further my knowledge on that. The chapter 13 ways to be an immigrant really resonated with me. Beautiful book
April 26, 2021
I don't like to give it 2 stars because the topic is really important, but it was ok and that means 2 (and I liked it). Maybe it's because I am not the target audience, I am familiar with the topic, I already believe in everything they said. Unfortunately, that also means that there was nothing new for me here, nothing that made me think about another perspective. Recommended for people who are at the beginning of understanding the refugee situation. I think that I would have appreciated longer essays, going into more details.
March 29, 2018
This book made me think about the difference between and immigrant and a refugee. An immigrant is a person who chooses to leave his/her country.Looking back at my family tree, most of my ancestors were immigrants. For example my great great great grandmother and her youngest son came to the United States soon after the Civil War. Her husband had died recently and the factory where they worked in Carlisle, England had to be closed down. She and her younger son were both out the only jobs that they had ever down. She decided to go with her younger son and meet with her two older boys who were already in United States so that they could obtain employment. Yet one of my friend's parents were both refugees. They had no choice but to leave their countries because they were descendants for Jews and lived in Nazi controlled countries. They had to flee or die. What forces people out can also be a natural disasters or wars. There are other differences like a lack of documentation.
This book is a collection of essays written by the refugees. They told told of the situations that caused them to leave,the process traveling, what experiences they had after to getting to the country, assimilating or remaining separate. The people came from Viet Nam, Mexico, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Hungary and others. Many of the stories are ones of fear and desperation, others tell of how they felt they never belonged to their new country. These stories are all recently written and reflect how they felt about being depicted by the current administration.
I received advanced reading of half of the essays n the finished this finished copy of The Displaced from the Publishers as a win from FirstReads but that in no way influenced my thoughts or feelings in my review.
This book is a collection of essays written by the refugees. They told told of the situations that caused them to leave,the process traveling, what experiences they had after to getting to the country, assimilating or remaining separate. The people came from Viet Nam, Mexico, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Hungary and others. Many of the stories are ones of fear and desperation, others tell of how they felt they never belonged to their new country. These stories are all recently written and reflect how they felt about being depicted by the current administration.
I received advanced reading of half of the essays n the finished this finished copy of The Displaced from the Publishers as a win from FirstReads but that in no way influenced my thoughts or feelings in my review.
March 21, 2022
I picked up this book a bit ago as it's on the historic Chautauqua Scientific and Literary Circle. Then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the mass refugee exodus. On top of crisis around the world that continue to displace people. And it's Lent. I was gearing up to say there was no better time to pick up a collection of stories by refugee writers on refugee lives. But it is ALWAYS a good time to read the stories of people with different life experiences than you.
All the stories were real and made me feel. And also made me feel connected. I have not left my homeland, but I have grown and the sense of lose of childhood, loss of family and friends, and a history deep in my DNA from people who DID leave for America -- those sentiments resonated with me and made me think.
From the introduction by Viet Thahn Nguyen:
"We need stories to give voice to a writer's vision, but also, possibility, to speak for the voiceless. This yearning to hear the voiceless is a powerful rhetoric but also potentially a dangerous one if it prevents us from doing more than listening to a story or reading a book. Just because we have listened to that story or read that book does not mean that anything has changed for the voiceless. Readers and writers should not deceive themselves that literature changes the world. Literature chances the world of readers and writers, but literature does not change the world until people get out of their chairs, go out in the world, and do something to transform the conditions of which the literature speaks. Otherwise literature will just be a fetish for readers and writers, allowing them to think that they are hearing the voiceless when they are really only hearing the writer's individual voice."
From "The Road" by Chris Abani:
"Some of the hardest things about the refugee experience -- that being a refugee is neither a noun nor a verb, but a stutter in time-space, always repeating. You are simultaneously always a refugee even when you are no longer a refugee."
"The body of the refugee will come to terms with the fragility of nationhood and stability. With the realization that when we are looking into the face of refugees, we are looking directly into our own possibility. ... This realization, that identity is fluid and never actualized or ever stable, and our own denial of this, is at the heart of the human condition. We fear, and sometimes hate, refugees, because their existence is our deepest fear: that we don't and never will belong anywhere."
"America is not really a nation of immigrants but rather of refugees. Trauma, displacement and a fanatical hope have marked all Americans from the occupants of the Mayflower through every subsequent group who arrived, or were forcibly brought here."
"We confront the refugee that we are starting into the mirror of our own memories of displacement."
"Humans have a near infinite capacity to normalize the world in order to survive and thrive."
From "Common Story" by David Bezmozgis:
"They hadn't necessarily needed to go. They weren't fleeing war or genocide, but only the economic shambles of the Soviet Union and its habitual, endemic anti-Semitism. But this wasn't new. They'd lived with it all their lives. Neither idealists nor iconoclasts, they were taking a gamble simply because an opportunity had presented itself and others had seized it."
"In the only way that matters, those other refugees are like them. They are not paragons of virtue, but flawed and unexceptional people who adhere to the basic tenets of the social contract. Because, fundamentally, what do modern democracies ask of their citizens? To obey the laws and pay their taxes. If they have done nothing else, my family has done that."
From "Guests of the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa" by Lev Golinkin:
"... the impression that people turn into refugees overnight. In my family's experience, that istn't rue. Become a refugee is a gradula process, a bleaching out, a transition into a ghostly existence. With the exception of those born in refugee camps, every refugee used to have a life. It doesn't matter whether you were a physician in Bosnia or a goat herder in the Congo."
"Once you've made the transition from When are we eating to When are they feeding us? you know you're a refugee."
"Dad paid for the postcards, then carefully stormed them, along with the receipt, inside his large overcoat. 'You have to act like a human being' he told me. ... After months of only necessities, it felt wonderful to buy something, just because."
From "God's Fate" by Aleksandar Hemon:
"Each getting here is a narrative entanglement of memory and history and emotions and pain and joy and guilt and ideas undone and reborn."
From "Refugees and Exiles" by Marina Lewyka:
"Maybe as with all of us the country which is our true home is the idyllic rose-tinted land of our own childhood, from which are always exiles."
From "This is What the Journey Does" by Maaza Mengiste:
"Lazarus' complete silence in John 11 and 12 ... Though the Sanhedrin wanted to kill him all along with Jesus Christ, through his resurrected life and all that it represented was as much a threat to them as the claims of Jesus, he is not allowed to speak. Lazarus is muted miracle, still alive today as a metaphor for uncanny second chances."
"You do not arrive the same as when you left."
From "The Ungrateful Refugee" by Dina Nayeri:
"Even those on the left talk about how immigrants make America great. They point to photographs of happy refugees turned good citizens, listing their contributions, as if that is the price of existing in the same country, on the same earth.
"But isn't glorifying the refugees who thrive according to Western standards just another way to endorse this same gratitude politics? ... Is the life of happy mediocrity a privilege reserved for those who never stray from home?"
"What America did was a basic human obligation. It is the obligation of every person born in a safer room to open the door when someone in danger knocks. It is your duty to answer us, even if we don't give you sugary success stories."
From "A Refugee Again" by Vu Tran:
"You can't write meaningfully or honestly about anything, even things that have nothing to do with your life, if you haven't yet confronted who you are."
From "New Lands, New Selves," by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma
"The metropolitan landscape of this city of my childhood is what I cling to the most, because it remains static and unchanging, filling me with nostalgia when I visit home, unlike the family and friends I have left there, who have grown and changed in ways that surprise and sadden me."
All the stories were real and made me feel. And also made me feel connected. I have not left my homeland, but I have grown and the sense of lose of childhood, loss of family and friends, and a history deep in my DNA from people who DID leave for America -- those sentiments resonated with me and made me think.
From the introduction by Viet Thahn Nguyen:
"We need stories to give voice to a writer's vision, but also, possibility, to speak for the voiceless. This yearning to hear the voiceless is a powerful rhetoric but also potentially a dangerous one if it prevents us from doing more than listening to a story or reading a book. Just because we have listened to that story or read that book does not mean that anything has changed for the voiceless. Readers and writers should not deceive themselves that literature changes the world. Literature chances the world of readers and writers, but literature does not change the world until people get out of their chairs, go out in the world, and do something to transform the conditions of which the literature speaks. Otherwise literature will just be a fetish for readers and writers, allowing them to think that they are hearing the voiceless when they are really only hearing the writer's individual voice."
From "The Road" by Chris Abani:
"Some of the hardest things about the refugee experience -- that being a refugee is neither a noun nor a verb, but a stutter in time-space, always repeating. You are simultaneously always a refugee even when you are no longer a refugee."
"The body of the refugee will come to terms with the fragility of nationhood and stability. With the realization that when we are looking into the face of refugees, we are looking directly into our own possibility. ... This realization, that identity is fluid and never actualized or ever stable, and our own denial of this, is at the heart of the human condition. We fear, and sometimes hate, refugees, because their existence is our deepest fear: that we don't and never will belong anywhere."
"America is not really a nation of immigrants but rather of refugees. Trauma, displacement and a fanatical hope have marked all Americans from the occupants of the Mayflower through every subsequent group who arrived, or were forcibly brought here."
"We confront the refugee that we are starting into the mirror of our own memories of displacement."
"Humans have a near infinite capacity to normalize the world in order to survive and thrive."
From "Common Story" by David Bezmozgis:
"They hadn't necessarily needed to go. They weren't fleeing war or genocide, but only the economic shambles of the Soviet Union and its habitual, endemic anti-Semitism. But this wasn't new. They'd lived with it all their lives. Neither idealists nor iconoclasts, they were taking a gamble simply because an opportunity had presented itself and others had seized it."
"In the only way that matters, those other refugees are like them. They are not paragons of virtue, but flawed and unexceptional people who adhere to the basic tenets of the social contract. Because, fundamentally, what do modern democracies ask of their citizens? To obey the laws and pay their taxes. If they have done nothing else, my family has done that."
From "Guests of the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa" by Lev Golinkin:
"... the impression that people turn into refugees overnight. In my family's experience, that istn't rue. Become a refugee is a gradula process, a bleaching out, a transition into a ghostly existence. With the exception of those born in refugee camps, every refugee used to have a life. It doesn't matter whether you were a physician in Bosnia or a goat herder in the Congo."
"Once you've made the transition from When are we eating to When are they feeding us? you know you're a refugee."
"Dad paid for the postcards, then carefully stormed them, along with the receipt, inside his large overcoat. 'You have to act like a human being' he told me. ... After months of only necessities, it felt wonderful to buy something, just because."
From "God's Fate" by Aleksandar Hemon:
"Each getting here is a narrative entanglement of memory and history and emotions and pain and joy and guilt and ideas undone and reborn."
From "Refugees and Exiles" by Marina Lewyka:
"Maybe as with all of us the country which is our true home is the idyllic rose-tinted land of our own childhood, from which are always exiles."
From "This is What the Journey Does" by Maaza Mengiste:
"Lazarus' complete silence in John 11 and 12 ... Though the Sanhedrin wanted to kill him all along with Jesus Christ, through his resurrected life and all that it represented was as much a threat to them as the claims of Jesus, he is not allowed to speak. Lazarus is muted miracle, still alive today as a metaphor for uncanny second chances."
"You do not arrive the same as when you left."
From "The Ungrateful Refugee" by Dina Nayeri:
"Even those on the left talk about how immigrants make America great. They point to photographs of happy refugees turned good citizens, listing their contributions, as if that is the price of existing in the same country, on the same earth.
"But isn't glorifying the refugees who thrive according to Western standards just another way to endorse this same gratitude politics? ... Is the life of happy mediocrity a privilege reserved for those who never stray from home?"
"What America did was a basic human obligation. It is the obligation of every person born in a safer room to open the door when someone in danger knocks. It is your duty to answer us, even if we don't give you sugary success stories."
From "A Refugee Again" by Vu Tran:
"You can't write meaningfully or honestly about anything, even things that have nothing to do with your life, if you haven't yet confronted who you are."
From "New Lands, New Selves," by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma
"The metropolitan landscape of this city of my childhood is what I cling to the most, because it remains static and unchanging, filling me with nostalgia when I visit home, unlike the family and friends I have left there, who have grown and changed in ways that surprise and sadden me."
June 26, 2022
"True justice is creating a world of social, economic, cultural, and political opportunities that would allow all these voiceless to tell their stories and be heard, rather than dependent on a writer or a representative of some kind."
The Displaced is a very interesting anthology because it centers around the refugee voices. There is a diverse array of authors of color included from all walks of life and different refugee stories/experiences. My favorites were "Introduction" by Viet Thanh Nguyen, "The Parent Who Stays" by Reyna Grande, and "To Walk in Their Shoes" by Meron Hadero.
I think because the introduction started off so strong, I was expecting that same raw emotion in the rest of the essays. I felt like a majority of the essays could have been longer; it ended when things were getting good!
It was still an interesting read. I understand that these are essays, vignettes, are unique to each author's experience as they unravel their trauma of being a refugee.
The Displaced is a very interesting anthology because it centers around the refugee voices. There is a diverse array of authors of color included from all walks of life and different refugee stories/experiences. My favorites were "Introduction" by Viet Thanh Nguyen, "The Parent Who Stays" by Reyna Grande, and "To Walk in Their Shoes" by Meron Hadero.
I think because the introduction started off so strong, I was expecting that same raw emotion in the rest of the essays. I felt like a majority of the essays could have been longer; it ended when things were getting good!
It was still an interesting read. I understand that these are essays, vignettes, are unique to each author's experience as they unravel their trauma of being a refugee.
August 12, 2018
Loved the uniqueness of each essay; the book encompasses a broad range of identities, experiences, and perspectives that were all enriching to read. My favourites in the collection were "The Ungrateful Refugee" by Dina Nayeri, "13 Ways of Being an Immigrant" by Porochista Khakpour, and "Refugee Children: The Yang Warriors" by Kao Kalia Yang.
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