BookDragon Refugees Tag

Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga [in Booklist]

06 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Arab American, Audio, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Syrian, Syrian American, Verse Novel/Nonfiction

When violent unrest arrives in Syria, Jude’s family is cleaved in half as she and her pregnant mother leave behind her father and older brother to live with her uncle’s family in Ohio. Jude perseveres with English, an unfamiliar (sometimes unwelcoming) culture, establishing new friendships,...

Butterfly Yellow by Thanhhà Lại [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Repost, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

In April 1975, the U.S. implemented Operation Babylift, a mass evacuation of children from South Việt Nam. As the country imploded, 12-year-old Hằng – who looked 8 – and her 5-year-old brother, Linh – who passed for 3 – presented themselves at the airport as...

Manuelito by Elisa Amado, illustrated by Abraham Urias [in Booklist]

08 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Canadian, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Mexican, Mexican American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Guatemalan-born Canadian author Elisa Amado (What Are You Doing? 2011) “has known many people whose lives have been disrupted, if not destroyed, by the conflicts that have occurred [in Guatemala] since the 1950s,” her author’s bio reveals. That violence continues in the Northern Triangle of Central America...

13 Fall Faves, Speed-Dating Style [in The Booklist Reader]

03 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, Caribbean American, Cuban, Cuban American, Fiction, Indian American, Iranian, Iranian American, Japanese, Korean, Latina/o/x, Lists, Memoir, Nonfiction, Persian American, Repost, Short Stories, South Asian, South Asian American, Translation, Turkish, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

Oh, good gracious! I can’t stand it: soooo many amazing books and my aging eyeballs just can’t keep up! Last week at ALA Annual, I got to “Read ‘n’ Rave,” but I had such an embarrassingly overflowing list, the buzzer went off (uh-oh!), and I couldn’t...

Princess Bari by Sok-yong Hwang, translated by Sora Kim-Russell [in Booklist]

18 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Because she was the seventh daughter, Princess Bari – whose name means “abandoned” – was discarded as a baby only to return in triumph to save the world. Like her mythic Korean namesake, Bari is the unwanted seventh girl in a house desperate for sons....

Notes on a Shipwreck: A Story of Refugees, Borders, and Hope by Davide Enia, translated by Antony Shugaar [in Christian Science Monitor]

08 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, European, Italian, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost

Whom to save, whom to let perish? The rescuers of refugees washing up on the Italian island of Lampedusa face an impossible choice, as memoirist and playwright Davide Enia describes in Notes on a Shipwreck: A Story of Refugees, Borders, and Hope “Calculate. It’s all you can...

Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao’s Revolution by Helen Zia [in Christian Science Monitor]

24 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Chinese American, Nonfiction, Repost

Last Boat Out of Shanghai has four stories at once personal and universal As the child of two refugees, Helen Zia can speak to the effects of displacement, separation, and the personal costs of survival, adaptation, and reinvention. As an advocate for Asian American and other minority communities,...

Zenobia by Morten Dürr, illustrated by Lars Horneman [in Booklist]

22 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Vast open water. An overcrowded boat. A horrific storm. A girl plunges backwards into the violent waves. Wishing, dreaming of rescue, Amina conjures happier moments playing hide-and-seek. “I am right here, Mama,” she thinks. She remembers making dolmas, salty like seawater – and tears. She...

Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson [in Shelf Awareness]

04 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Black/African American, Caribbean, Caribbean American, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW "[T]he school wanted to try something new: Could they put [six] kids together in a room with one teacher and make something amazing?" For Ms. Laverne's fifth/sixth grade Brooklyn, N.Y., class, the answer is a resounding yes. Deemed "special kids," Haley, Holly, Ashton, Amari,...

The Unwanted: Stories of the Syrian Refugees by Don Brown [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Young Adult Readers

The Unwanted’s first two images couldn't be more jarring: on the title page, a hijab-wearing woman raises her hand to her face in overwhelming distress; a turn of the page reveals a girl holding flowers, smiling back over her shoulder as she walks across a...

The Caregiver by Samuel Park [in Booklist]

13 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean American, Latin American, Repost

At 26, Mara is the titular caregiver for a lonely woman in her early 40s with stomach cancer, who insists she’ll bequeath Mara her exclusive Bel Air home upon her impending death. Mara is already too familiar with loss, having grown up in Rio de...

Illegal by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin, illustrated by Giovanni Rigano [in Booklist]

10 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in African, British, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Ten-year-old Ebo has lost his parents, his Uncle Patrick is always drunk, and his older sister Sisi is missing. And then his older brother Kwame vanishes to search for Sisi and find a better life in Europe. With nothing left tying him to their tiny...

Core Collection: Refugee Stories [in Booklist]

06 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Arab, British, Cuban, Cuban American, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Iranian, Iraqi, Italian, Jewish, Lists, Memoir, Middle Eastern, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Translation, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

More than 65 million people, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, have been forced to leave their homes. Whether they are made refugees in another country or displaced internally, 2017 UN data shows that “nearly 20 people are forcibly displaced every minute as a...

The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq by Dunya Mikhail, translated by Dunya Mikhail [in Booklist]

28 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Iraqi, Iraqi American, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

Award-winning poet Dunya Mikhail, an Iraqi exile who fled her homeland in 1996 and eventually settled in Michigan, makes her nonfiction debut with a hybrid text that combines reportage and personal memoir with the intention of giving voice to northern Iraqi women victims of Daesh...

Ask a North Korean: Defectors Talk about Their Lives Inside the World’s Most Secretive Nation by Daniel Tudor [in Booklist]

08 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British, Korean, Nonfiction, North Korean, Repost, Translation

For Western readers, most North Korea-focused titles cover two categories, writes Daniel Tudor, former Korea correspondent for The Economist: politics and “testimony-style books written by defectors who tell horror stories.” What’s missing are “the real daily experiences of the vast majority of the North Koreans”...

Refugee by Alan Gratz [in School Library Journal]

13 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Arab, Audio, Cuban, European, Fiction, Middle Eastern, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW The term "refugee" is constantly in the news. In direct response, Alan Gratz gets personal with desensitizing statistics, policies, and politics by giving names, families, and histories to three tweens fleeing three countries during three time periods. Each fits the "refugee" label but is...

Inheriting the War: Poetry & Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees edited by Laren McClung [in Booklist]

14 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Poetry, Repost, Short Stories, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American

"The language of war turns the other into an object – the language of literature humanizes,” writes Laren McClung in her introduction to a collection featuring 61 contributors (and five translators) – 62 counting Yusef Komunyakaa’s resonating preface – each intimately affected by the Vietnam...

Cuba on the Verge: 12 Writers on Continuity and Change in Havana and Across the Country edited by Leila Guerriero [in Booklist]

18 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Cuban, Latin American, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Since Obama’s 2014 visit reestablishing ties between the U.S. and Cuba, American travelers have had the long-lost opportunity for direct exploration, but there are “no easy answers,” warns Argentinian journalist Leila Guerriero at the start of her anthology of stupendously astute essays. Half are...

Series: Leaving My Homeland

31 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Afghan, African, Children/Picture Books, Iraqi, Nonfiction, Syrian

A Refugee's Journey from Afghanistan by Helen Mason A Refugee's Journey from the Democratic Republic of the Congo by Ellen Rodger A Refugee's Journey from Iraq by Ellen Rodger A Refugee's Journey from Syria by Helen Mason Working with members of the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University in Toronto,...

The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui + Author Interview [in Bloom]

13 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonfiction, Repost, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

Q&A with Thi Bui: Writer, Illustrator, Teacher On the cover of Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir is a perfect quote: “A book to break our heart and heal it,” blurbs fellow Vietnamese American refugee and 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction...