American Refuge

I found this book very interesting as the author has brought into light true stories of refugee experiences by interviewing them at American Guilford College who are volunteers and students hosting their stories of displacement, of waiting in limbo, of resettlement, and the author Diya's own refugee story. As an adult immigrant to the US and a child of Palestinian refugees who was born and raised in Jordan ("the alternate homeland"), the author highlights some of the challenges that are unusual the refugees faced: affording safe housing, accessing appropriate health care, and finding fulfilling and well-paying work. Barrier of language is another trauma they carry.

Refugees have so little times to settle in and find themselves in immediate poverty and debt - including the the airfare that needs to be paid back. To secure employment is the first and foremost necessity for refugees. Their first job would be non-commensurate with their skills, certifications, degrees, or interests, an added obstacle as many credentials and degrees from their home countries are not recognized in the US. To find employment and successfully integrate learning English and taking time to adjust emotionally, mentally, and culturally overtakes their needs. sometimes the payments could be too low even to afford rent, not even minimum wage either. The commute could be long and the work exhausting and painful.

The author of this book gives impressive and brilliant definitions and latest statistics of refugees in the world today in a detailed manner. Everybody wants to be US, with US, in US. Everything else is worse - a Eurocentric/Americentric ideology - a harmful belief. I would rate this book 4 star!

I just reviewed the book, American Refuge: True Stories of the Refugee Experience by Diya Abdo. Thanks to the author Diya Abdo and Publisher Steerforth Press, and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book for my honest review.

This book is a very important read for people who wish to understand the refugee crisis currently happening in the world. Given that the author has experience through her parents who were refugees, she is a great person to help relay the stories of other refugees.

I found her outlining of the particular issues that refugees face when arriving to the US to be particularly powerful, from the language barrier to finding housing and employment. I have volunteered with refugee resettlement agencies and find so much of this resonates with the local refugee community that I have worked with.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for making this ARC available to me to read.
This author is a Palestinian refugee now teaching at a college in the US who set up a program to sponsor and begin support for refugees at her college, which has now expanded to other colleges. This is an excellent idea--housing, food, health support, English classes and teachers and students who might already speak the language--if I worked at a college I would definitely want to urge participation in this program. The author tells both of her own refugee experiences, in Jordan and other places, and also gives us parts of the stories of some of the refugees who have been helped at her college.
Pros of this book:
The writing is lovely, almost dreamlike at times
The segments about her own life are quite good and the ones about the refugees she helped are just very compelling
The only con: That dreamlike writing can make it hard to follow at times and I struggled a tiny bit keeping everyone separate and remembering who I was reading about. But this was fairly trivial for me; the stories were good enough that I just noticed this in a few places.
Wonderful addition to shelves if you have an interest in immigration or refugees.

What is a refugee and why do they feel the need to leave their country? Diya Abdo tells us several stories of refugees from different countries, different background, different history. She does this not in an emotional way but very objective, nearly academically. Incredible horrors are described as facts to make us understand that behind every refugee there's a story so hurtful that this person hd no other choice than to leave and seek life elsewhere. For me the most shocking part of the book was to see how long this journey takes for so many of them and that most of them never find a new place they can really call home.
Diya Abdo says they leave their souls in their home country. Can you imagine life without your soul?

American Refuge presents stories of refugees from different contexts in a deeply moving and intimate portrayal by Professor Diya Abdo, who interweaves her own family's experiences of the Nakba.

What I loved about this book:
- structure of themes and narratives
- equal page space given to all narrators
- respect accorded to all voices: no one is dumbed down, reduced to stereotypes, or flattened to fit a model narrative
- provides a nuanced portrayal of refugee camps from the perspective of former refugees and not volunteers
- covers the the steep toll of moving to the US and giving up degrees, professions, comforts, and culture

A must read for EVERYONE.

Diya was a refugee herself and decided to do something to help other refugees. She started the Every Campus A Refuge program at Guilford College in North Carolina where she is a professor.

This book is very insightful to what life is like before and after relocation for refugees here in the US. The stories shared in the book are first-hand accounts of refugees benefiting from the Every Campus A Refuge program. It inspired me to find ways to help the refugees in my area.

Thank you to NetGalley and Steerforth Press for the ARC in exchange for my honest review!

The author comes from a place of being a refugee herself, born in Jordan the child of Palestinian refugees displaced in 1967. She ended up in America and when the refugee crisis was growing in 2015, asked her employers, Guilford College, to offer a campus house to provide accommodation and support for new refugees. The Every Campus a Refuge project was born there, but we focus back on just this community to look at a handful of refugees from different countries and the details of their lives, displacement and settlement.

There are some shocking statistics in this book – for example, only 1% of refugees achieve true settlement, moving to usually a third country and finding housing, support and employment, the rest usually just over the border from their own country but unable to return. At the end of the book, ­­­­­Abdo discusses the different names for people who have left one country for another (including expatriates, who are always White, and colonists, who are always excused) and how the misnomer of illegality hangs over all.

But the substance of the book is the stories of the people who have come and settled in her community in America, their family stories, their experiences in their home country, their journey and their time in America. These are absolutely heart-rending – the need to rehearse over and over again the same spiel to give all authorities, your story having to be exactly the same each time; children getting separated from relatives when they hit 18, being put on a separate, not family, pathway; the truth that people have to basically choose between their children and their parents. There’s much warmth, earlier travellers going back to help the new arrivals in their first chaotic times in America, the networks of charities that provide absolutely essential help, the support from members of people’s own communities.

The reality is still harsh, though – travel costs being taken out of the small stipend refugees are given on arrival, the need to get employment – any employment – in order to be able to afford to live – and then the Covid pandemic hits and the crowded, unsafe housing the refugees end up having to take, already devastatingly proved fire-unsafe, mean they are at higher risk of illness.

The writing is poetic, almost dreamy, circling round like the details of the refugees’ lives circle round, constantly reminding us of the situations they’ve been in and what they’ve been through, like a chorus reciting and standing witness. I found this profoundly moving and thought it elevated the book beyond mere details. It got across the constant thoughts and memories of trauma the subjects of the book must have in their own minds.

Although this covers US policy in great detail, it’s not offputting but interesting – I would love to read a similar book set in the UK, though. The subjects’ great resilience and strength comes through, and there’s a good point at the end about how institutions of higher education need to be a model for their communities, as well as recognising where they sit in international systems of inequity.

A powerful and emotional book which should be required reading in US and even UK schools.