We Are Displaced Malala Yousafzai “More than 68.5 million people are currently living as refugees or internally displaced people — the majority are children, and most are girls. In Malala Yousafzai’s new book, "We Are Displaced: My Journey and Stories from Refugee Girls Around the World", she introduces the girls behind the numbers.” Source: Mckinley Tretler (Communications manager at the Malala Fund) https://malala.org/newsroom/archive/we-are-displaced-out-now NYT Review: “Reframing Refugee Children’s Stories” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/books/review/we-are-displaced-malala-yousafzai.html
We Built the Wall Eileen Truax “A Mexican-American lawyer exposes corruption in the US asylum procedure and despotism in the Mexican government. From a storefront law office in the US border city of El Paso, Texas, one man set out to tear down the great wall of indifference raised between the US and Mexico. Carlos Spector has filed hundreds of political asylum cases on behalf of human rights defenders, journalists, and political dissidents. Though his legal activism has only inched the process forward—98 percent of refugees from Mexico are still denied asylum—his myriad legal cases and the resultant media fallout has increasingly put US immigration policy, the corrupt state of Mexico, and the political basis of immigration, asylum, and deportation decisions on the spot. We Built the Wall is an immersive, engrossing look at the new front in the immigration wars.” Source:https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/557142/we-built-the-wall-by-eileen-truax/ Review: “We Built the Wall combines the flair of a novel and the depth ofthe best investigative journalism with a passionate commitment to human rights to take readers into the heart of today’s immigration crisis. Truax highlights the voices of people who are fighting for justice on both sides of the border to shed light on the systems that have led to a deeply transnational human rights crisis. Immigration, she makes clear, is the result, not the cause, of this crisis.” —Aviva Chomsky, author of Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal and “They Take Our Jobs!”: And 20 Other Myths About Immigration
What is the What Dave Eggers “From the bestselling author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, 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:https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4952.What_Is_the_What NYT Review: “The Lost Boy” https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/books/review/Prose.t.html
The New Odyssey: The Story of Europe's Refugee Crisis Patrick Kingsley “Europe is facing a wave of migration unmatched since the end of World War II - and no one has reported on this crisis in more depth or breadth than The Guardian's migration correspondent, Patrick Kingsley. Throughout 2015, Kingsley traveled to 17 countries along the migrant trail, meeting hundreds of refugees making epic odysseys across deserts, seas and mountains to reach the holy grail of Europe. This is Kingsley's unparalleled account of who these voyagers are. It's about why they keep coming, and how they do it. It's about the smugglers who help them on their way, and the coastguards who rescue them at the other end. The volunteers that feed them, the hoteliers that house them, and the border guards trying to keep them out. And the politicians looking the other way.” Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29914640-the-new-odyssey
The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You Dina Nayrei “Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother, and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel-turned–refugee camp. Eventually she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement. In these pages, a couple falls in love over the phone, and women gather to prepare the noodles that remind them of home. A closeted queer man tries to make his case truthfully as he seeks asylum, and a translator attempts to help new arrivals present their stories to officials. Nothing here is flattened; nothing is simplistic. Nayeri offers a new understanding of refugee life, confronting dangers from the metaphor of the swarm to the notion of “good” immigrants. She calls attention to the harmful way in which Western governments privilege certain dangers over others. With surprising and provocative questions, The Ungrateful Refugee recalibrates the conversation around the refugee experience. Here are the real human stories of what it is like to be forced to flee your home, and to journey across borders in the hope of starting afresh.” Source:http://www.dinanayeri.com/books/the-ungrateful-refugee-what-immigrants-never-tell-you/ NYT Review: “She Fled the Iranian Revolution, but Her Troubles Didn’t End There” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/03/books/review/the-ungrateful-refugee-dina-nayeri.html
Human Flow (2017) “More than 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes to escape famine, climate change and war, the greatest displacement since World War II. Filmmaker Ai Weiwei examines the staggering scale of the refugee crisis and its profoundly personal human impact. Over the course of one year in 23 countries, Weiwei follows a chain of urgent human stories that stretch across the globe, including Afghanistan, France, Greece, Germany and Iraq.” Source:https://www.humanflow.com/ Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video
Than I Came by Boat Marleena Forward “This short documentary tells the story of Tri Nguyen's childhood escape from war-torn Vietnam, and his eventual resettlement in Australia.” “The film won the Audience Award and the 2015 Human Rights and Film Festival in Melbourne, Australia. It was later featured on The Guardian website, and has screened at events in the US, the UK, Europe, New Zealand and Australia.” Source:https://vimeo.com/133805771 Where to watch:https://vimeo.com/133805771
For Sama (2019) “A self-shot, intimate and visceral documentary, BAFTA-award-winning For Sama is a journey through motherhood during the bombings of the Syrian Civil War. Waad al-Kateab’s first feature documentary is a story of love, resilience and hope, but framed by suffering and harsh dilemmas.” Source: https://www.forsamafilm.com/ Where to watch: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/for-sama/
