Recommended Reading
Please let me know if you have any books about refugees or other cultural/international issues that you would recommend! MARC@denrescue.org
The Middle of Everywhere: Helping Refugees Enter the American Community by Mary Pipher
Categories: Refugees, resettlement, cultural brokers, how-to, non-fictionDescription: Over the past decade, Mary Pipher has been a great source of wisdom, helping us to better understand our family members. Now she connects us with the newest members of the American family--refugees. In cities all over the country, refugees arrive daily. Lost Boys from Sudan, survivors from Kosovo, families fleeing Afghanistan and Vietnam: they come with nothing but the desire to experience the American dream. Their endurance in the face of tragedy and their ability to hold on to the virtues of family, love, and joy are a lesson for Americans. Their stories will make you laugh and weep--and give you a deeper understanding of the wider world in which we live.
The Middle of Everywhere moves beyond the headlines into the homes of refugees from around the world. Working as a cultural broker, teacher, and therapist, Mary Pipher has once again opened our eyes--and our hearts--to those with whom we share the future. (Source: Amazon.com)
Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman's Quest to Make a Difference by Warren St. John
Categories: Refugees, youth soccer, non-fiction, small town, super-diversityDescription: The extraordinary tale of a refugee youth soccer team and the transformation of a small American town
Clarkston, Georgia, was a typical Southern town until it was designated a refugee settlement center in the 1990s, becoming the first American home for scores of families in flight from the world’s war zones—from Liberia and Sudan to Iraq and Afghanistan. Suddenly Clarkston’s streets were filled with women wearing the hijab, the smells of cumin and curry, and kids of all colors playing soccer in any open space they could find. The town also became home to Luma Mufleh, an American-educated Jordanian woman who founded a youth soccer team to unify Clarkston’s refugee children and keep them off the streets. These kids named themselves the Fugees.
Set against the backdrop of an American town that without its consent had become a vast social experiment, Outcasts United follows a pivotal season in the life of the Fugees and their charismatic coach. Warren St. John documents the lives of a diverse group of young people as they miraculously coalesce into a band of brothers, while also drawing a fascinating portrait of a fading American town struggling to accommodate its new arrivals. At the center of the story is fiery Coach Luma, who relentlessly drives her players to success on the soccer field while holding together their lives—and the lives of their families—in the face of a series of daunting challenges.
This fast-paced chronicle of a single season is a complex and inspiring tale of a small town becoming a global community—and an account of the ingenious and complicated ways we create a home in a changing world. (Source: Amazon.com)
I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced by Nujood Ali and Delphine Minoui
Categories: Forced marriage, women's rights, Yemen, autobiographyDescription: Forced by her father to marry a man three times her age, young Nujood Ali was sent away from her parents and beloved sisters and made to live with her husband and his family in an isolated village in rural Yemen. There she suffered daily from physical and emotional abuse by her mother-in-law and nightly at the rough hands of her spouse. Flouting his oath to wait to have sexual relations with Nujood until she was no longer a child, he took her virginity on their wedding night. She was only ten years old.
Unable to endure the pain and distress any longer, Nujood fled—not for home, but to the courthouse of the capital, paying for a taxi ride with a few precious coins of bread money. When a renowned Yemeni lawyer heard about the young victim, she took on Nujood’s case and fought the archaic system in a country where almost half the girls are married while still under the legal age. Since their unprecedented victory in April 2008, Nujood’s courageous defiance of both Yemeni customs and her own family has attracted a storm of international attention. Her story even incited change in Yemen and other Middle Eastern countries, where underage marriage laws are being increasingly enforced and other child brides have been granted divorces.
Recently honored alongside Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice as one of Glamour magazine’s women of the year, Nujood now tells her full story for the first time. As she guides us from the magical, fragrant streets of the Old City of Sana’a to the cement-block slums and rural villages of this ancient land, her unflinching look at an injustice suffered by all too many girls around the world is at once shocking, inspiring, and utterly unforgettable. (Source: Amazon.com)
Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Categories: Women's rights, refugees, Somalia, Netherlands, Islam, atheism, autobiography Description: Infidel shows the coming of age of this elegant, distinguished—and sometimes reviled—political superstar and champion of free speech—the development of her beliefs, iron will, and extraordinary determination to fight injustice done in the name of religion. Raised in a strict Muslim family, Hirsi Ali survived civil war, female circumcision, brutal beatings, an adolescence as a devout believer, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, and life in four countries under dictatorships. She escaped from a forced marriage and sought asylum in the Netherlands, where she fought for the rights of Muslim women and the reform of Islam, earning her the enmity of reactionary Islamists and craven politicians. (Source: Amazon.com)
When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor...and Yourself by Brian Fikkert and David Platt
Categories: Poverty, relief, rehabilitation, development, correct responseDescription: With more than 200,000 copies sold, When Helping Hurts is a paradigm-forming contemporary classic on the subject of poverty alleviation and ministry to those in need. Emphasizing the poverty of both heart and society, this book exposes the need that every person has and how it can be filled. The reader is brought to understand that poverty is much more than simply a lack of financial or material resources and that it takes much more than donations and handouts to solve the problem of poverty.
While this book exposes past and current development efforts that churches have engaged in which unintentionally undermine the people they're trying to help, its central point is to provide proven strategies that challenge Christians to help the poor empower themselves. Focusing on both North American and Majority World contexts, When Helping Hurts catalyzes the idea that sustainable change for people living in poverty comes not from the outside-in, but from the inside-out.
What is the What by Dave Eggers
Categories: The Lost Boys of Sudan, refugees, resettlement, fiction (memoir based on a true story)Description: What Is the What is the epic novel based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng who, along with thousands of other children —the so-called Lost Boys—was forced to leave his village in Sudan at the age of seven and trek hundreds of miles by foot, pursued by militias, government bombers, and wild animals, crossing the deserts of three countries to find freedom. When he finally is resettled in the United States, he finds a life full of promise, but also heartache and myriad new challenges. Moving, suspenseful, and unexpectedly funny, What Is the What is an astonishing novel that illuminates the lives of millions through one extraordinary man. (Source: Amazon.com)
Films:
God Grew Tired of Us
Synopsis: God Grew Tired Of Us chronicles the arduous journey of three young Southern Sudanese men, John Bul Dau, Daniel Pach and Panther Bior, to the United States where they strive for a brighter future. As young boys in the 1980s, they had walked a thousand miles to escape their war-ridden homeland, and then had to make another arduous journey to escape Ethiopia.
During the five years they walked in search of safety, thousands died from starvation, dehydration, bomb raids and genocidal murder. Finally, they found relative safety in Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp. In 2001, 3,600 lost boys, including John, Daniel and Panther, were invited by the United States to live in America. Assisted by Catholic Charities International, the three boys uproot their lives and once again embark on a journey, leaving behind thousands of other refugees who, in the course of their traumatic odyssey, have become their adopted extended family. They must now learn to adapt to the shock of being thrust into the economically intense culture of the United States, learning new customs, adapting to new and strange foods, coping with the ordeal of getting, and keeping a job, or multiple jobs, while never forgetting the loved ones they left behind in Africa. They dedicate themselves to doing whatever they can to help those they left behind in Kakuma, and to discovering the fate of their parents and family. (Source: Wikipedia)
Home Across Lands
Synopsis: HOME ACROSS LANDS is a documentary that explores the journey of resettlement-- it tells the story of a small group of Kunama refugees and how they reestablish their sense of community in their new home in America. Considered to be some of the original inhabitants of Eritrea, the Kunama people are a marginalized minority populating the remote and fertile regions near the border of Ethiopia. In 1998, war between Eritrea and Ethiopia broke out in a conflict over these border lands forcing over 4,000 Kunama to flee across the border into Northern Ethiopia. In 2000, the war ended with the Eritrean government regaining control of the disputed area, separating thousands of Kunama from their homeland and way of life. Today the Kunama wait in desolation, 45 km from the disputed Eritrean/Ethiopian border, warehoused in the Shimelba Refugee Camp in Northern Ethiopia. Life in the camp is difficult and opportunities for a better life are nonexistent, but the Kunama remain committed to their strong sense of community and family in spite of their displacement. Unwanted in Ethiopia and unable to return to their homes safely, a small number of Kunama are given the opportunity for resettlement in the United States. HOME ACROSS LANDS chronicles the journey of these newly arrived Kunama as they strive to become self-reliant, invested participants in their new home. Guiding their transition is the resettlement agency, International Institute of Rhode Island, that connects them to the resources they need as they work to establish a new community and better life for their families. (Source: Amazon.com)
