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Books about Refugees

Title: Refugees
Author: Catherine Stine
Audience: teen
Summary: September 11, 2001 Two teenagers on opposite sides of the globe flee everything they know. In a world turned upside down by tragedy, they are refugees. Sixteen-year-old Dawn runs away from her unhappy foster home in California and travels to New York City. Johar, an Afghani teenager, sees his world crumble before him. He flees his war-ravaged village and the Taliban, and makes a dangerous trek to a refugee camp in Pakistan. Thanks to his knowledge of English, Johar finds a job at the camp assisting Louise, the Red Cross doctor—and Dawn’s foster mother. Through e-mails and phone calls, Dawn and Johar begin to share and protect each other’s secrets, fears, and dreams, and a remarkable bond forms that gives each of them hope and the courage to find a path home.

Title: The Middle of Everywhere: Helping Refugees Enter the American Community
Author: Mary Pipher
Audience: teen/adult
Summary: 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.

Title: Hello, America: A Refugee’s Journey from Auschwitz to the New World
Author: By Livia Bitton-Jackson
Audience: child/teen
Summary: Having withstood the horrors of Auschwitz and made it out alive, eighteen-year-old Elli is more than ready to leave behind the painful memories and start fresh in America. What she is not fully prepared for, though, are all the challenges of creating a new life in a completely new place — especially one as hectic as New York City! Within moments of stepping off the ship and into the arms of welcoming relatives, Elli’s mind starts spinning with questions. Will she go to college? Will she have to take on a full-time job to pay the bills? And will she be able to fulfill her dream of becoming a teacher? Elli has dreamed for years of this abundance of opportunity and possibility — and to think, this is only the beginning! Having withstood the horrors of Auschwitz and made it out alive, eighteen-year-old Elli is more than ready to leave behind the painful memories and start fresh in America. What she is not fully prepared for, though, are all the challenges of creating a new life in a completely new place — especially one as hectic as New York City! Within moments of stepping off the ship and into the arms of welcoming relatives, Elli’s mind starts spinning with questions. Will she go to college? Will she have to take on a full-time job to pay the bills? And will she be able to fulfill her dream of becoming a teacher? Elli has dreamed for years of this abundance of opportunity and possibility — and to think, this is only the beginning!

Title: Living in a Refugee Camp: Carbino’s Story
Author: David Dalton
Audience: teen
Summary: Discusses Sudan’s civil war and its need for refugee camps, particularly focusing on the life of a man who describes what his life was like in his village and then in a refugee camp.

Title: Bullets on the Water: Refugee Stories
Author: Compiled by Ivaylo Grouev
Audience: adult
Summary: civil wars in Africa, the collapse of the central regime in Somalia, genocide in Rwanda, the Persian Gulf war in the Middle East, the collapse of the military regimes in Central America, new ethnic clashes in the former USSR — all these events have resulted in an increased number of displaced people, most of whom never expected to find themselves in such a situation. Their refusal to accept the division of their countries into separate ethnic, religious, or political groups or to participate in dubious political games exacted a heavy price — they lost their homelands and became refugees.These stories show what it means to find yourself a stranger in your homeland and the difficulties to be overcome before you feel at home again. Most importantly, however, these stories tell us about acceptance and the need to bridge differences in language, religion, culture, and traditions.

Title: Dark Dreams
Author: Eva Sallas, Sonja Dechian, Heather Miller
Summary: Written by children and young adults and selected from a nationwide school competition, this anthology of essays, interviews, comments and short stories imaginatively recreates the experiences of young individuals who came to Australia as refugees. From escaping the Holocaust and surviving terrible boat journeys from Vietnam to persevering war-torn Croatia and Bosnia and fleeing oppression in Afghanistan and Iraq, these stories provide a representative sample of the various backgrounds and amazing experiences of asylum seekers in Australia over the last 50 years. Written with both the humor and innocence of children and the frank compassion of young adults, the recurrent theme of friendships that have been lost, broken, remembered, and found emerge as these young asylum seekers relive their escapes and relate their experiences fleeing to a new world.

Title: The Lost Boys Of Sudan: An American Story Of The Refugee Experience
Author: Mark Bixler
Summary: he tragic and inspiring story of four Sudanese refugees who make their way to the US to rebuild their lives.

Title: Brothers In Hope: The Story Of The Lost Boys Of Sudan
Author: Mary Williams
Audience: child
Summary: Eight-year-old Garang, orphaned by a civil war in Sudan, finds the inner strength to help lead other boys as they trek hundreds of miles seeking safety in Ethiopia, then Kenya, and finally in the United States.

Title: Whispering Cloth: A Refugee’s Story
Author: Pegi Deitz Shea
Audience: child
Summary: A young Hmong girl in a Thai refugee camp in the mid-1970s finds the story within herself to create her own pa’ndau.

Title: Where the River Runs: A Portrait of a Refugee Family
Author: Nancy Price Graff
Audience: young adult
Summary: Profiles a family of immigrants, the Preks, from Cambodia, struggling to make a better life for themselves as they embrace American culture while still treasuring much of their Cambodian heritage.

Title: Cry Baby
Author: Lynn Kramer
Audience: 8-10 years
Summary: tells the story of Zione, a young refugee girl who finds herself in a new home after fleeing from war. Zione has difficulty making new friends because the other children see her as being different. She overcomes this by demonstrating through a heroic act that she is really no different from the other children.

Title: On the Other Side of the Hill
Author: Sibylla Martin
Audience: 8-10 years
Summary: the story of Jacques, a boy who finds himself in a refugee camp and has trouble making friends with the local children. However, a football match between the children from the refugee camp and the local population brings the children together.

Title: The Lost Children
Author: Sibylla Martin
Audience: 11-12 years
Summary: recounts the story of how young Ibuka becomes separated from her family when fleeing her home and comes to find herself, along with her younger brother, at a centre for lost children.

Title: Letters to Grandma Grace
Author: Victoria Francis
Audience: 13-14 years
Summary: a story of a refugee family in Africa. The family’s experiences in their country of asylum are told through letters from the children to their Grandma Grace. The letters illustrate the difficulties and hardships they face in adapting to their new home.

For more resources, see COAR’s extensive listing of resources http://www.coarweb.org/resources/.