Refugee Memoir

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.

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.

This is a unique first-hand account of what it was like to be a Jewish refugee imprisoned in Britain and Canada during World War II. Its immediacy is what makes it such a valuable eyewitness account. While there are other memoirs written decades after internment, Walter Igersheimer wrote this book shortly after he was deported from Canada because the Liberal government in the 1940s did not want Jews to become Canadian citizens.

In 2006, after his father was killed, Gulwali Passarlay was caught between the Taliban, who wanted to recruit him, and the Americans, who wanted to use him. To protect her son, Gulwali's mother sent him away. The search for safety would lead the 12-year-old across eight countries, from the mountains of Eastern Afghanistan through Iran and Europe to Britain. Over the course of 12 harrowing months, Gulwali endured imprisonment, hunger, cruelty, brutality, loneliness, and terror - and nearly drowned crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

Annahita Parsan was born into a Muslim family in Iran and grew up with the simple hope of one day finding a good husband, having children, and doing some good in the world. Married and a mother before she turned 18, Annahita found herself unexpectedly widowed and trapped for years in an abusive second marriage that she later fled - discovering instead a God who might love her. Stranger No More is the remarkable true story of Annahita's path from oppression to the life-changing hope of Jesus.

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.

Born in Czechoslovakia, Mark Slouka's parents survived the Nazis only to be forced to then escape the Communist purges after the war. Smuggled out of their own country, the newlyweds joined a tide of refugees moving from Innsbruck to Sydney to New York, dragging with them a history of blood and betrayal that their son would be born into.

"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.

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.

A rich boy turned refugee tells the story of coming full circle to succeed in ways beyond his imagination. Born to a family that had recently fled British India during the partition of India and Pakistan, Ram's early life in Mombasa seemed charmed with wealth and success. However, losing all of this overnight through a second deportation, this time from Kenya to the UK, he saw the course of his life change beyond recognition.

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.

Cyrus Jaffery has been on the move for as long as he can remember, rarely pausing to reflect. As a child, he was forced into exile and had to learn his own way, first in Pakistan and then the United States. After college, he was swept up in the whirlwind of marriage, starting a family, forming a business, and ceaselessly working to grow his personal and professional endeavors. In the process of writing this book, Cyrus realized that what keeps him moving is a hunger to make a difference, to be counted, to be part of something bigger than himself.

In 1987, Nathaniel Nyok, tormented by thoughts of missing parents and siblings, fled a bloody scene and a burning village in Sudan. At eight, he had just capitulated to an orphan-like life with a new title, A Lost Boy of Sudan, living in a refugee camp for 14 years. As he battled the loss of home and family, he chose education over revenge as the road to freedom, a road that eventually brought him to America, land of freedom and rules, welcomes and prejudices. This story portrays his transition to American culture as a time of both confusion and hope.

A Syria-born dancer offers his deeply personal story of war, statelessness, and the pursuit of the art of dance in this inspirational memoir.

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.

Born in 1960, Jesus Ruiz Henao grew up poor, but wanted to be rich like the drug dealers he saw growing up in the cocaine-producing region of Colombia’s Valle of the Cauca. To realize his ambition, Ruiz Henao moved to London, United Kingdom, in 1985. There, he and his wife settled in the quiet suburb of Hendon, where he held down mundane but respectable cleaning and bus driving jobs. At least to outward appearances....

This is the true story of a male couple's quest for a life in the West...one is American, the other is Iraqi. The American learns about gays in the Middle East and human trafficking as he helps his partner escape from Turkey by raft, sneak their way into Athens, and seek asylum in Amsterdam.

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.

At the peak of his powers, and with the world at his feet after a breakout season in the Australian Football League (AFL), the North Melbourne Kangaroos' Majak Daw was on the verge of finally becoming one of the AFL's bona fide superstars - but it all came crashing down. After secretly battling years of mental health issues, the Sudanese-born phenomenon leapt off the Bolte Bridge in Melbourne in a shock attempt to end his life.

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.