Refugee Memoir

Abdul is just seven years old when his parents are killed before his eyes. As a brutal war sweeps Sudan, Abdul and his three-year-old brother are forced to flee. Their gruelling journey across the Sahara to a refugee camp in Chad is fraught with danger, and every day is a struggle against hunger and disease. Until one day Abdul is offered a chance to escape. A chance that could save him, but will force him to make the most heartbreaking decision of his life. Abdul's death-defying flight leaves deep scars.

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.

When Catharine H. Murray travels to a small town on the banks of the Mekong River to work at a refugee camp, she falls in love and marries a local man with whom she has three sons. When their middle son is diagnosed with cancer at age five, their pursuit of a cure takes them from Thailand to Seattle, before they eventually return to Thailand, settling on a remote mountaintop. Full of honesty and grace, Now You See the Sky allows the listener to witness the fathomless loss of a beloved child and learn how tragedy can transform us, expand our vision, and make us more fully alive.

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.

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.

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.

In 1975, 13-year-old Lan Cao boarded an airplane in Saigon and got off in a world where she faced hosts she had not met before, a language she didn't speak, and food she didn't recognize, with the faint hope that she would be able to go home soon. Lan fought her way through confusion, and racism, to become a successful lawyer and novelist. Four decades later, she faced the biggest challenge in her life: raising her daughter, Harlan - half Vietnamese by birth and 100 percent American teenager by inclination.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The word “refugee” sparks conversation and fuels emotion. There are more than 22 million refugees worldwide and another 65 million who have been forcibly displaced. But who are these people? Images filter into our consciousness via dramatic photographs - but these photos only offer a glimpse into their stories. As a young ER nurse in Boston, Roberta Gately was stopped cold by stark images of big-bellied babies with empty haunting stares in the news. She called the aid organization featured in the news story, and, within two months, she had become a humanitarian aid worker.

Carlos Eire's story of a boyhood uprooted by the Cuban Revolution quickly lures us in, as eleven-year-old Carlos and his older brother Tony touch down in the sun-dappled Miami of 1962 - a place of daunting abundance where his old Cuban self must die to make way for a new, American self waiting to be born. In this enchanting new work, narrated in Eire's inimitable and lyrical voice, young Carlos adjusts to life in his new country.

When Karen O’Reilly’s 28-year-old friend and roommate dies by suicide on a bright New Year’s Day, Karen, also suffering from severe depression, decides that she needs to do something drastic to avoid following a similar path. Six months later she leaves her comfortable western existence behind to work with refugees in Uganda. In this candid and irreverent memoir, Karen tells the story of working with people seeking refuge - from war, and torture, and genocide - as a young woman seeking refuge from herself.

Former Ethiopian refugee Yonas Hagos shares his amazing story about his plight in Ethiopia, his emigration to the US, and the business journey he took to become the owner of dozens of restaurant franchises. From Scrappy to Self-Made describes how Hagos beat all the odds to become the owner of more than four dozen restaurant franchises that have earned him $10 million, and counting.

An evocative blend of immersion journalism and memoir, How to Make a Life shares the immigration story of a Tibetan refugee family who crossed real and cultural bridges to make a life in Madison, Wisconsin, with the assistance of the Midwestern woman they befriended. From tales of escaping Tibet over the Himalayas to striking a balance between old traditions with new to bridging divides one friendly gesture at a time, listeners will expand their understanding of family, culture, and belonging.

Many people worldwide view Romania as being one of the most beautiful and historic European countries, having marvelous castles, monasteries, and breathtaking scenery. That wasn't the case for Viorel Matei, being born in Buzias in 1953, the place of the heart, known for its healing waters, just eight years after World War II had ended.

It was a wrong turn that changed everything. When Luma Mufleh—a Muslim, gay, refugee woman from hyper-conservative Jordan—stumbled upon a pick-up game of soccer in Clarkston, Georgia, something compelled her to join. The players, 11- and 12-year-olds from Liberia, Afghanistan, and Sudan, soon welcomed her as coach of their ragtag but fiercely competitive group. Drawn into their lives, Mufleh learned that few of her players, all local public school students, could read a single word. She asks, “Where was the America that took me in? That protected me? How can I get these kids to that America?”

As a young boy, Aurelio F. Barreto III fled communist Cuba with his family to search for the American Dream. But making his first million in his twenties only led the young inventor to realize he could not buy the kind of life he was searching for. Read what finally got Aurelio's attention, and how God used his lifes' failures and challenges in an unexpected new way.

As a five-year-old boy, Pao Lor joined thousands of Hmong who fled for their lives through the jungles of Laos in the aftermath of war. After a difficult and perilous journey that neither of his parents survived, he reached the safety of Thailand, but the young refugee boy’s challenges were only just beginning.