The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives

by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Editor), David Bezmozgis (Contribution by), Thi Bui (Contribution by), Reyna Grande (Contribution by), Aleksandar Hemon (Contribution by)

Overview

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen, called on 17 fellow refugee writers from across the globe to shed light on their experiences, and the result is The Displaced, a powerful dispatch from the individual lives behind current headlines.

Today the world faces an enormous refugee crisis: 68.5 million people fleeing persecution and conflict from Myanmar to South Sudan and Syria, a figure worse than the flight of Jewish and other Europeans during World War II and beyond anything the world has seen in this generation. Yet in the United States, United Kingdom, and other countries with the means to welcome refugees, anti-immigration politics and fear seem poised to shut the door. Even for readers seeking to help, the sheer scale of the problem renders the experience of refugees hard to comprehend.

Viet Nguyen, called “one of our great chroniclers of displacement” (Joyce Carol Oates, The New Yorker), brings together writers originally from Mexico, Bosnia, Iran, Afghanistan, Soviet Ukraine, Hungary, Chile, Ethiopia, and elsewhere to make their stories heard. They are formidable in their own right—MacArthur Genius grant recipients, National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award finalists, filmmakers, speakers, lawyers, professors, and The New Yorker contributors—and they are all refugees, many as children arriving in London and Toronto, Oklahoma and Minnesota, South Africa and Germany. Their 17 contributions are as diverse as their own lives have been, and yet hold just as many themes in common.

Reyna Grande questions the line between “official” refugee and “illegal” immigrant, chronicling the disintegration of the family forced to leave her behind; Fatima Bhutto visits Alejandro Iñárritu’s virtual reality border crossing installation “Flesh and Sand”; Aleksandar Hemon recounts a gay Bosnian’s answer to his question, “How did you get here?”; Thi Bui offers two uniquely striking graphic panels; David Bezmozgis writes about uncovering new details about his past and attending a hearing for a new refugee; and Hmong writer Kao Kalia Yang recalls the courage of children in a camp in Thailand.

“There is no single refugee story, and as the editor of The Displaced, a collection of refugee writers exploring and reflecting on their experiences, Viet Thanh Nguyen gives these stories room to breath and unfurl.” —Millions

List of contributors:
Joseph Azam
David Bezmozgis
Fatima Bhutto
Thi Bui
Ariel Dorfman
Lev Golinkin
Reyna Grande
Meron Hadero
Aleksandar Hemon
Joseph Kertes
Porochista Khakpour
Marina Lewycka
Maaza Mengiste
Dina Nayeri
Vu Tran
Novuyo Rosa Tshuma
Kao Kalia Yang

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781419729485
Publisher:	Abrams Press
Publication date:	04/10/2018
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	707,751
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam in 1971. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, he and his family fled to the United States. The author of three books, Nguyen is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and professor of English and American studies and ethnicity at University of Southern California. He lives in Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

Introduction Viet Thanh Nguyen 11

The Road Chris Abani 23

Last, First, Middle Joseph Azam 31

Common Story David Bezmozgis 43

Flesh and Sand Fatima Bhutto 51

Perspective and What Gets Lost Thi Bui 61

How Succulent Food Defeated Trump's Wall Before It Has Been Built Ariel Doreman 67

Guests of the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa Lev Golinkin 75

The Parent Who Stays Reyna Grande 81

To Walk in Their Shoes Meron Hadero 91

God's Fate Aleksandar Hemon 99

Second Country Joseph Kertes 113

13 Ways of Being an Immigrant Porochista Khakpour 121

Refugees and Exiles Marina Lewvcka 129

This Is What the Journey Does Maaza Mengiste 137

The Ungrateful Refugee Dina Nayeri 145

Am I a Refugee? Raja Shehadeh 159

A Refugee Again Vu Tran 165

New Lands, New Selves Novuyo Rosa Tshuma 173

Refugee Children: The Yang Warriors Kao Kalia Yang 189

List of Contributors 197

Interviews

Los Angeles, CA

Editorial Reviews

Together, the stories share similar threads of loss and adjustment, of the confusion of identity, of wounds that heal and those that don’t, of the scars that remain.“

The San Francisco Chronicle

One of the Ten Best Books of the Year

Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Nguyen and 17 other writers share their own experiences with displacement and immigration, and their… stories remind us why every culture needs newcomers.

The Week

Poignant and timely, these essays ask us to live with our eyes wide open during a time of geo-political crisis. Also, 10% of the cover price of the book will be donated annually to the International Rescue Committee, so I hope readers will help support this book and the vast range of voices that fill its pages.

Electric Literature

…an incisive and heartbreaking exploration of the refugee crisis…

Bustle

In this collection of 17 essays (one consisting of cartoons) by writers who were forced to leave their homes, Viet Thanh Nguyen, a Pulitzer-winning novelist and himself a Vietnamese refugee to America, begins to assemble one. In so doing he gives ordinary Westerners a heart-wrenching insight into the uprooted lives led in their midst…the collection succeeds in demonstrating that this dispersed community in some ways resembles other nations. It has its founding myths, but its citizens all have their own tragedies, victories and pain—and each has a story to tell.

The Economist

Each essay is worthwhile.

Literary Hub

The essays are consistently both eloquent and riveting.

World Literature Today

"The book is being published at a time when discourse around refugees has shifted distressingly in the Trump era, with new caps on refugee settlement being instituted and immigration bans remaining clear policy positions.

Entertainment Weekly

With more than a dozen essays on refugees from writers throughout the world, the collection — edited by Nguyen — attempts a vital task: to give voice to the oft-silenced and to redirect the current stream of anti-refugee rhetoric and sentiment in a more just and humanizing direction. The end result is an accessible and engaging dialogue that mines memories, many of them traumatic, and delivers on its global message of displacement and loss... it goes without saying that Nguyen’s collection, with its unapologetic repositioning of the refugee front and center, couldn’t have arrived at a more critical time.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune

Powerful and deeply moving personal stories about the physical and emotional toll one endures when forced out of one’s homeland.

PBS Online

★ 09/01/2018
Edited by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author and Vietnamese American professor, this heartbreaking collection of essays humanizes the refugee experience. Accomplished writers tackle the differences between refugees and immigrants and how Donald Trump's election and Brexit influenced the perception of refugees in the United States and Europe. Most moving are tales of parents and children who left their homes for better lives yet lost so much of themselves. Contributors describe harrowing escapes, economically driven evacuations, and wartime disasters that forced them out of many countries: Mexico, Bosnia, Thailand, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Chile, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Hungary, Iran, Zimbabwe, China, and more. Dina Nayeri's "The Ungrateful Refugee," about childhood bullying, and Meron Hadero's "To Walk in Their Shoes," a chronicle of his parents' path from Ethiopia to Germany to Czechoslovakia to Washington, DC, will especially resonate with teens. VERDICT U.S. policy about refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants will continue to make headlines for years—this book is an essential purchase for all libraries and a must for displays on current events.—Sarah Hill, Lake Land College, Mattoon, IL

School Library Journal

… “The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives” seeks to give voice to the experience of being forced to leave one place and seek a home elsewhere, and challenge the political identity given to refugees by virtue of being unwanted.

Bay Area News Group

With tens of millions of people fleeing persecution and conflict today as refugees, according to the United Nations, these voices and stories are more timely than ever.

NBC News online

There is no single refugee story, and as the editor of The Displaced, a collection of refugee writers exploring and reflecting on their experiences, Viet Thanh Nguyen gives these stories room to breath and unfurl.

The Millions

… “The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives” seeks to give voice to the experience of being forced to leave one place and seek a home elsewhere, and challenge the political identity given to refugees by virtue of being unwanted.”—Bay Area News Group

“With tens of millions of people fleeing persecution and conflict today as refugees, according to the United Nations, these voices and stories are more timely than ever.” —NBC News online

“There is no single refugee story, and as the editor of The Displaced, a collection of refugee writers exploring and reflecting on their experiences, Viet Thanh Nguyen gives these stories room to breath and unfurl.”—The Millions

From the Publisher