Refugee Memoir

The astonishing journey of a bright, utterly displaced boy, from the short-lived African nation of Biafra, to Jamaica, to the harshest streets of Los Angeles - a searing memoir that adds fascinating depth to the coming-to-America story.

At age eleven, Kenan Trebinčević was a happy, karate-loving kid living with his family in the quiet Eastern European town of Brčko. Then, in the spring of 1992, war broke out and his friends, neighbors and teammates all turned on him. Pero—Kenan’s beloved karate coach—showed up at his door with an AK-47, screaming: “You have one hour to leave or be killed!” Kenan’s only crime: he was Muslim.

One day when Mondiant Dogon was only three years old, his father’s lifelong friend, a Hutu man, came to their home with a machete in his hand and warned the family they were to be killed within hours. Dogon’s family fled into the forest, initiating a long, dangerous journey into Rwanda. They made their way to the first of several UN tent cities in which they would spend decades. But their search for a safe haven had just begun. Rarely do refugees get to tell their own stories. Through his writing, Dogon took control of his own narrative and spoke up for forever refugees everywhere.

After following her mother to the US at a young age to pursue economic opportunities, one woman must come to terms with the ways in which systematic racism and resultant trauma keep the American Dream inaccessible to Black people. In the early '90s, young Tiffanie Drayton and her siblings left Trinidad and Tobago to join their mother in New Jersey, where she'd been making her way as a domestic worker, eager to give her children a shot at the American Dream. At first, life in the US was idyllic.

In an era of mass migration in which more than 100 million people are displaced comes this lyrical portrait of Syrian and Iraqi refugees and the belongings they carry. What We Remember Will Be Saved is a book of hope, home, and the stories we hold within us when everything else has been lost. Journalist and scholar Stephanie Saldaña, who lived in Syria before the war, sets out on a journey across nine countries to meet refugees and learn what they salvaged from the ruins when they escaped.

Before the Soviet invasion of 1980, Enjeela Ahmadi remembers her home - Kabul, Afghanistan - as peaceful, prosperous, and filled with people from all walks of life. But after her mother, unsettled by growing political unrest, leaves for medical treatment in India, the civil war intensifies, changing young Enjeela’s life forever. Amid the rumble of invading Soviet tanks, Enjeela and her family are thrust into chaos and fear when it becomes clear that her mother will not be coming home.

Six. That was the number of people killed every minute of every hour of the day for 100 days. The dead lay there mutilated, raped, disfigured, and dismembered. They were strewn across the African countryside, piled up in empty churches, and thrown in the lakes and rivers. Authored by one of the survivors, We Were Royal Refugees is the gripping and heart-wrenching true story of the horror, loss, forgiveness, and triumph of a family in one of the worst tragedies in modern history, the Rwandan genocide.

Pink Jade is a touching and inspiring chronicle of a young Vietnamese girl and her family's life during the turmoil preceding and following the Vietnam War. It speaks to her journey to find peace and love after escaping the horrors of war-torn Vietnam. Sharing the trauma of forced displacement and the difficulties and uncertainty of what would come next, the author invites listeners to walk with her, as she and her family relocate her lost father and start a new life with a new direction.

Pensaban cubrir la misión de rescate durante una semana y estuvieron casi un mes en el mar. La periodista de TVE Yolanda Álvarez, junto al reportero gráfico Joaquín Relaño, vivieron en el verano de 2019 una odisea junto a decenas de personas ansiosas por alcanzar las costas de Europa. Este es el relato emocionante y crudo de aquella travesía a bordo del Open Arms, con 160 hombres, mujeres y niños en peligro de naufragio.

She was the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, the longest-serving Labor Secretary, and an architect of the New Deal. Yet beyond these celebrated accomplishments there is another dimension to Frances Perkins's story. Without fanfare, and despite powerful opposition, Perkins helped save the lives of countless Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. Based on extensive research, including thousands of letters housed in the National Archives, Dear Miss Perkins adds new dimension to an already extraordinary life story.

Alla fine degli anni ottanta, quando la sua famiglia decise di fuggire dall'Iran in guerra, Dina Nayeri era una bambina. Il rumore delle bombe, le sirene e le corse per nascondersi nel seminterrato, la poca luce filtrata dalle finestre serrate erano tutte cose normali. Negli anni a venire, sui letti a castello delle case per i rifugiati di Londra, di Dubai, di Roma, poi dell'Oklahoma, Dina conobbe per la prima volta il silenzio del sonno tranquillo e ininterrotto: quella fu la sua prima idea di cosa fosse la pace.

Set against a backdrop of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, the reign of Nazi Germany, and the entire course of World War II in Europe, American Shoes recounts the tumultuous childhood of a young American girl and her family trapped within a country that turned against itself, where human decency eroded and then vaporized. Forced to grow up in the midst of endemic fear stoked by a ravenous madman, American Shoes portrays the breakdown of a society from a child’s point of view, deep inside a land where millions of law-abiding citizens were targeted as threats, and then removed for extermination.

Forty-five years later, a spiritually tormented smuggler reveals his shocking secret life. Born in a refugee camp, the author sidestepped hallucinogens, gangsters, law enforcement, and conmen, graduating from pot dealer to personal gopher for a world-class smuggler, later becoming an undercover operative for an “adjunct arm” of the US government. Marjan’s path took him to places he really didn’t need to be long before he arrived.

Daughter of Song is a gripping account of a bold attempt to right an irreparable wrong while spanning dangerous treks through the Khmer Rouge-controlled jungles of Cambodia and the suffering of wasted years behind bars.

"I saw many killed. I almost starved. But I escaped to refugee camps in Thailand and eventually made it to the U.S." Thus begins Leth Oun's poignant and vivid memoir. A survivor of the Cambodian Killing Fields—having spent a torturous three years, eight months, and ten days imprisoned by the Khmer Rouge—Oun thrived in America, learning English, becoming a citizen, and working as an officer in the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division. In A Refugee's American Dream, Oun shares hard memories of Cambodia, where his father was executed, and his family enslaved in labor camps.

I 2013 flygter den kurdiske journalist Behrouz Boochani ud af sit fødeland Iran. Efter en farefuld færd over havet bliver han samlet op og indespærret på Manus Island, en ø i Stillehavet nord for Papua Ny Guinea. I fem år holdes han ulovligt interneret i asylcentret Manus Fængsel. "Kun bjergene er min ven" er hans vidnesbyrd. Smuglet ud af lejren én sms ad gangen er bogen en unik insiderfortælling og en litterær kraftpræstation i mange genrer. Den er også en oprørsk stemme, der vidner om trods, håb og menneskelighed i et umenneskeligt system.

In 1789, as the French Revolution shook Europe to the core, the new United States was struggling for survival in the face of financial insolvency and bitter political and regional divisions. When the United States Spoke French explores the republic's formative years from the viewpoint of a distinguished circle of five Frenchmen taking refuge in America. When the French Revolution broke out, these men had been among its leaders.

It is early 20th-century Greece. Theodosia, a teenage girl and her younger sister, lose their parents in Constantinople and are thrown into a massive population exchange between Greece and Turkey. They arrive at a refugee camp in Northern Greece, where their choice is to perish or to use the resources at hand in order to survive. Despite all the difficulties they encounter, the sisters decide not to give up, and fight for a better life. Theodosia's story carries on throughout a century and is peppered with horrific events, likable characters, and a great love story.

Into the maelstrom of unprecedented contemporary debates about immigrants in the United States, this perfectly timed book gives us a portrait of what the new immigrant experience in America is really like. Written as a "guide" for the newly arrived, and providing "practical information and advice", Roya Hakakian, an immigrant herself, reveals what those who settle here love about the country, what they miss about their homes, the cruelty of some Americans, and the unceasing generosity of others.

Beyond the Sand and Sea is an extraordinary and inspiring book for anyone searching for pinpricks of light in the darkness. Meticulously reported over three years, it reveals the strength of a family of Somali refugees who never lost faith in America - and exposes the broken refugee resettlement system that kept that family trapped for more than two decades and has turned millions into permanent exiles.