American Refuge
True Stories of the Refugee Experience
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Narrated by:
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Diya Abdo
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By:
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Diya Abdo
About this listen
“A moving and timely book that strips away misleading politics to reveal the complexities of real human lives."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
A provocative, conversation-sparking exploration of refugee experiences told in their own words, for fans of Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s The Undocumented Americans and Viet Thanh Nguyen
Forced to leave their homes, they came to America...
In this intimate and eye-opening book, Diya Abdo—daughter of refugees, U.S. immigrant, English professor, and activist—shares the stories of seven refugees. Coming from around the world, they’re welcomed by Every Campus A Refuge (ECAR), an organization Diya founded to leverage existing resources at colleges to provide temporary shelter to refugee families.
Bookended by Diya’s powerful essay "Radical Hospitality" and the inspiring coda “Names and Numbers,” each chapter weaves the individual stories into a powerful journey along a common theme:
• Life Before (“The Body Leaves its Soul Behind”)
• The Moment of Rupture (“Proof and Persecution”)
• The Journey (“Right Next Door”)
• Arrival/Resettlement (“Back to the Margins”)
• A Few Years Later (“From Camp to Campus”)
The lives explored in American Refuge include the artist who, before he created the illustration on the cover of this book, narrowly escaped two assassination attempts in Iraq and now works at Tyson cutting chicken.
We learn that these refugees from Burma, Burundi, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, and Uganda lived in homes they loved, left against their will, moved to countries without access or rights, and were among the 1% of the "lucky" few to resettle after a long wait, almost certain never to return to the homes they never wanted to leave. We learn that anybody, at any time, can become a refugee.
©2022 Diya Abdo (P)2022 Steerforth Press LLCListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Empathetic and caring, Abdo’s expert writing conveys the nuanced stories of people whose lives have been heartwrenchingly upended, and who are doing what they must to survive and rebuild.”—Booklist
“A powerful and extremely timely look at the lives of refugees arriving in the United States from around the world, Diya Abdo’s American Refuge will be a major conversation starter.”—Indy Week
"For countless refugees, Diya Abdo's Every Campus a Refuge changed their lives. Reading her book and their stories will change yours."—Susan Muaddi Darraj, author of A Curious Land, American Book Award winner
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My Friend Anne Frank
- The Inspiring and Heartbreaking True Story of Best Friends Torn Apart and Reunited Against All Odds
- By: Hannah Pick-Goslar, Dina Kraft
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
In 1933, Hannah Pick-Goslar and her family fled Nazi Germany to live in Amsterdam, where she struck up a close friendship with her next-door neighbor, an outspoken and fun-loving young girl named Anne Frank. For several years, the inseparable pair enjoyed a carefree childhood of games, sleepovers, and treats with the other children in their neighborhood of Rivierenbuurt. But in 1942, Hannah and Anne's lives abruptly changed forever.
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the missing piece to Anne’s story and the complete picture of Hannah’s
- By Wilson on 07-13-23
By: Hannah Pick-Goslar, and others
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Last Boat Out of Shanghai
- The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao's Revolution
- By: Helen Zia
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 17 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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The dramatic real-life stories of four young people caught up in the mass exodus of Shanghai in the wake of China's 1949 Communist revolution. Benny must decide either to escape to Hong Kong or navigate the intricacies of a newly Communist China. Annuo, forced to flee with her father, a defeated Nationalist official, becomes an unwelcome exile in Taiwan. The financially strapped Ho fights deportation from the US in order to continue his studies while his family struggles at home. Bing, given away by her poor parents, faces the prospect of a new life among strangers in America.
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Great book, poor performance
- By Helpful Buyer on 07-02-19
By: Helen Zia
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In Order to Live
- A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom
- By: Yeonmi Park
- Narrated by: Eji Kim
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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In In Order to Live, Yeonmi Park shines a light not just into the darkest corners of life in North Korea, describing the deprivation and deception she endured and which millions of North Korean people continue to endure to this day, but also onto her own most painful and difficult memories. She tells with bravery and dignity for the first time the story of how she and her mother were betrayed and sold into sexual slavery in China and forced to suffer terrible psychological and physical hardship before they finally made their way to Seoul, South Korea - and to freedom.
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Wow. What a story!
- By Jfm on 02-01-16
By: Yeonmi Park
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Finding Samuel Lowe
- China, Jamaica, Harlem
- By: Paula Williams Madison
- Narrated by: Paula Williams Madison
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Thanks to her spiteful, jealous Jamaican mother, Nell Vera Lowe was cut off from her Chinese father, Samuel, when she was just a baby, after he announced that he was taking a Chinese bride. By the time Nell was old enough to travel to her father's shop in St. Anne's Bay, he'd taken his family back to China, never learning what became of his eldest daughter. Bereft, Nell left Jamaica for New York to start a new life.
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Fascinating
- By ayodele higgs on 01-27-16
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Echoes from the Holocaust
- A Memoir
- By: Mira Ryczke Kimmelman
- Narrated by: Susan Marlowe
- Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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The daughter of a Jewish seed exporter, the author was born Mira Ryczke in 1923 in a suburb of the Baltic seaport of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland). Her childhood was happy, and she learned to cherish her faith and heritage. Through the 1930s, Mira's family remained in the Danzig area despite a changing political climate that was compelling many friends and neighbors to leave. With the Polish capitulation to Germany in the autumn of 1939, however, Mira and her family were forced from their home.
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4.5* - memoir of a survivor
- By Christine Newton on 06-09-17
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Into the Forest
- A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love
- By: Rebecca Frankel
- Narrated by: Natalie Pela
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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In the summer of 1942, the Rabinowitz family narrowly escaped the Nazi ghetto in their Polish town by fleeing to the forbidding Bialowieza Forest. They miraculously survived two years in the woods—through brutal winters, Typhus outbreaks, and merciless Nazi raids—until they were liberated by the Red Army in 1944. After the war, they trekked across the Alps into Italy, where they settled as refugees before eventually immigrating to the United States.
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Great story with an added benefit
- By Scottsville Stu on 12-30-21
By: Rebecca Frankel
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Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden
- Two Sisters Separated by China’s Civil War
- By: Zhuqing Li
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Scions of a once-great southern Chinese family that produced the tutor of the last emperor, Jun and Hong were each other’s best friends until, in their twenties, they were separated at the end of the Chinese Civil War. One became a model Communist, the other a model capitalist. On Taiwan, Jun married a Nationalist general, established a trading company, and emigrated to the United States. On the Communist mainland, Hong built her medical career under a cloud of suspicion about her family and survived two waves of “re-education” before she was acclaimed for her achievements.
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Wonderful Story of a Family’s Survival Through Political Change…
- By Marie G. on 04-12-23
By: Zhuqing Li
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A Thousand Miles to Freedom
- My Escape from North Korea
- By: Sebastien Falletti, Eunsun Kim
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Eunsun Kim was born in North Korea, one of the most secretive and oppressive countries in the modern world. As a child, Eunsun loved her country...despite her school field trips to public executions, daily self-criticism sessions, and the increasing gnaw of hunger as the countrywide famine escalated. By the time she was 11 years old, Eunsun's father and grandparents had died of starvation, and Eunsun too was in danger of starving. Finally her mother decided to escape North Korea with Eunsun and her sister.
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Not Much New Here, but Courage and Hope to Spare
- By Gillian on 03-25-16
By: Sebastien Falletti, and others
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Dreams in a Time of War
- A Childhood Memoir
- By: Ngugi wa'Thiong'o
- Narrated by: Hakeem Kae-Kazim
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Of Kenya's largest ethnic group, the Kikuyu, Ngugi wa Thiongo was born in 1938 in the backlands of his country (Kiambu district) to a father whose four wives bore him two dozen or so children. Ngugi was the fifth child of the third wife. His father was a peasant farmer forced to become a squatter after the British Imperial Act of 1915. Before going off to school, he had what was then considered a bizarre and inexplicable thirst for learning....
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An escape through education
- By Tango on 06-17-12
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Keeping Hope Alive
- One Woman: 90,000 Lives Changed
- By: Hawa Abdi, Sarah J. Robbins
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Dr. Hawa Abdi, "the Mother Teresa of Somalia" and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, is the founder of a massive camp for internally displaced people located a few miles from war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia. Since 1991, when the Somali government collapsed, famine struck, and aid groups fled, she has dedicated herself to providing help for people whose lives have been shattered by violence and poverty.
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How Refreshing
- By Jean Watz on 07-21-14
By: Hawa Abdi, and others
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Always Remember Your Name
- A True Story of Family and Survival in Auschwitz
- By: Andra Bucci, Tatiana Bucci
- Narrated by: Gabrielle De Cuir
- Length: 4 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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On March 28, 1944, six-year-old Tati and her four-year-old sister, Andra, were roused from their sleep and arrested. Along with their mother, Mira, their aunt, and cousin Sergio, they were deported to Auschwitz. Over 230,000 children were deported to the camp, where Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death, performed deadly experiments on them. Only a few dozen children survived, Tati and Andra among them.
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Important read!
- By Holly Thomas on 02-24-22
By: Andra Bucci, and others
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999
- The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz
- By: Heather Dune Macadam, Caroline Moorehead - foreword
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 13 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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On March 25, 1942, nearly a thousand young, unmarried Jewish women boarded a train in Poprad, Slovakia. Filled with a sense of adventure and national pride, they left their parents' homes wearing their best clothes and confidently waving good-bye. Believing they were going to work in a factory for a few months, they were eager to report for government service. Instead, the young women - many of them teenagers - were sent to Auschwitz. Their government paid 500 Reich Marks (about $200) apiece for Nazis to take them as slave labor. Of those 999 innocent deportees, only a few survived.
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I don’t think you can ever fully understand
- By Shelley on 02-25-20
By: Heather Dune Macadam, and others
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Eat the Buddha
- Life and Death in a Tibetan Town
- By: Barbara Demick
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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A gripping portrait of modern Tibet told through the lives of its people, from the best-selling author of Nothing to Envy.
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TIBET
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 08-24-21
By: Barbara Demick