Reading List

Half the Sky:
Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

This is “a passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world.” Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn take us to far corners of the world to meet the “extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth.
They show how a little help can transform the lives of women and girls abroad. Through these stories, they help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part.”

Little Daughter: A Memoir of Survival in Burma and the West
by Zoya Phan
Zoya Phan’s account of growing up in Burma in the heart of the Karen resistance movement is one of the first English-language memoirs of this decades-long conflict.  Zoya’s mother was a guerrilla soldier, her father a freedom activist. Her early years were blissfully removed from the war. At the age of fourteen, however, Zoya’s childhood was shattered as the Burmese army attacked. With their house in flames, Zoya and her family fled. So began the terrible years of running from guns,  hiding in the jungle, and surviving the challenges of refugee camp life . A gifted pupil, she was eventually able to escape, first to Bangkok, then to the UK  where she has become an outspoken activist for her people.

The Middle of Everywhere: Helping Refugees Enter the American Community
by Mary Pipher
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 opens our eyes–and our hearts–to those with whom we share the future.

Remade in America: A series about America’s newest immigrants and their impact on institutions
NY Times Report, March 14, 2009
The United States has experienced the greatest surge in immigration since the early 20th century, with one in five residents a recent immigrant or a close relative of one. This series examines how American institutions are being pressed to adjust.

Gran Torino
Directed by Clint Eastwood

In one of the first major Hollywood pictures to feature Hmong-American actors, Clint Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, an sour old man who can’t get along with either his kids or his neighbors. When Tao, a young Hmong teenager, tries to steal his prized 1973 Ford Gran Torino, Kowalski is drawn against his will into the life of Tao’s family, and is soon taking steps to protect them from the gangs that foul their neighborhood.

Brother, I’m Dying
by Edwidge Danticat

Writer Edwidge Danticat came to think of her uncle Joseph as her “second father,” when she was left in his care as a 4 year old after her parents left Haiti for America. At twelve, she joined her parents and youngest brothers in New York City to make a life in a new country, leaving Joseph behind. She and her family continued to fear for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation deteriorated. When Joseph finally applies for asylum here, Danticat witnesses his harrowing mistreatment by US immigration authorities, even as she prepares to give birth to her own child on American soil.

A Camel for the Son
bu Faizal Sheikh
online edition
A Camel for the Son stems from photographer Faizal Sheikh’s decade-long engagement with the Somali refugee communities living in Kenya’s northeastern desert. This book follows the refugees from their arrival in Kenya during the outbreak of civil war in 1991, measuring the cost of war as witnessed in a generation of children raised in exile. A Camel for the Son bridges the gap between the First World and the Third World, fostering a greater awareness and understanding that honors the Somali women as individuals who assert themselves and persevere in the face of great obstacles. The images and testimonials urge us not to forget that these people exist, even as world attention shifts away from their plight.

The Translator: A Tribesman’s Memoir of Darfur
by Daoud Hari
Recommended by ILC former director Marilyn Hegge
A heart-stopping memoir, written by a native Darfuri translator who, after escaping the massacre of his village by the genocidal Janjaweed, returned to work with reporters and UN investigators in the riskiest of situations. Hari charts the horrific landscape of genocide in the stories of refugee camp survivors: “It is interesting how many ways there are for people to be hurt and killed, and for villages to be terrorized and burned… I would say that these ways to die and suffer are unspeakable, and yet they were spoken: we interviewed 1,134 human beings over the next weeks.” Throughout, Hari demonstrates almost incomprehensible decency; those with the courage to join Hari’s odyssey may find this a life-changing read. Also on DVD.

Rain in a Dry Land
PBS special now on DVD
How do you measure the distance from an African village to an American city? What does it mean to be a refugee in today’s “global village”? “Rain in a Dry Land” provides eye-opening answers as it chronicles the fortunes of two Somali Bantu families transported by relief agencies from years of civil war and refugee life to Atlanta, Georgia, and Springfield, Massachusetts.
There’s a copy available in our office.

The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir
by Kao Kalia Yang
Recommended by ILC Volunteer Joy Botts
In search of a place to call home, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to America. But lacking a written language of their own, the Hmong experience has been primarily recorded by others. Driven to tell her family’s story after her grandmother’s death, The Latehomecomer is Kao Kalia Yang’s tribute to the remarkable woman whose spirit held them all together. It is also an eloquent, firsthand account of a people who have worked hard to make their voices heard.

What Is the What
by Dave Eggers
This is the brilliant fictionalized auto-biography of a real-life refugee, Valentino Achak Deng. His boyhood journey from the village of Marial Bai to refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya is interwoven with his scenes from his adult life in Atlanta, where he experiences some of the best and the worst of American life. Proceeds from the book fund Valentino’s efforts to build a secondary school in his hometown in Sudan.

Rambo 4
on DVD
“Teacher, this is why we come to America,” said some of our Karen students after seeing the movie. Not for the faint of heart, this latest Rambo installment puts a much-needed spotlight on one of the world’s longest running civil conflicts. Vietnam Vet John Rambo has retired to the Thai-Burma border where he makes a simple living running a riverboat. A group of Christian aid workers approaches him for an escort into war-torn Burma, where they hope to help ethnic Karen villagers who are being regularly tortured and massacred by Burmese government soldiers. Rambo reluctantly agrees to enter the fray and save the day.