A moving and timely book that strips away misleading politics to reveal the complexities of real human lives.
A collection of stories of refugees in America from the founder of the Every Campus a Refuge organization.
Jordan-born Abdo, a professor of English at Guilford College, where she founded ECAR, begins with her own experience as the daughter and granddaughter of Palestinian refugees. She then introduces readers to seven refugees from around the world—Palestine, Burma, Uganda, Iraq, Syria—who have started new lives near where the author lives in North Carolina. Stressing repeatedly that anyone can become a refugee, Abdo effectively demonstrates what many in the U.S. fail to grasp: “All refugees have lived lives that are distinct and individual—complicated, rich, layered. Something happens in their lives that fractures them from their souls, their homes. A fracture that threatens their safety. And it is a fracture they are not allowed to forget. Their future depends on forever remembering their persecution.” By following the unique journeys of these courageous individuals, the author reveals the often terrifying and overwhelming process of resettlement. These biographical portraits are thorough and compassionate, covering the initial reason for escape, life in refugee camps, endless questioning by various government agencies, and countless obstacles to putting down roots in a strange land. Abdo ends with an in-depth examination of the politicized and sometimes racist terms used to describe refugees, nearly all of whom merely seek a better life. Unfortunately, most don’t find it. Even with organizations like ECAR, writes the author, “less than 1 percent of the world’s refugees are ever resettled. The majority of refugees remain, sometimes for generations, in camps a bomb-sound away from the towns they fled, across a relatively recently created national border.” By humanizing and contextualizing the refugee experience, Abdo forces readers to confront their own preconceived notions about a global crisis that will only become more widespread in the years to come.
A moving and timely book that strips away misleading politics to reveal the complexities of real human lives.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 979-1-58642-342-1
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Steerforth
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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