City of Refugees
The Story of Three Newcomers Who Breathed Life into a Dying American Town
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Narrated by:
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Samara Naeymi
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By:
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Susan Hartman
About this listen
A gripping portrait of refugees who forged a new life in the Rust Belt, the deep roots they’ve formed in their community, and their role in shaping its culture and prosperity.
"This is an American tale that everyone should read. . . . The storytelling is so intimate and the characters feel so deeply real that you will know them like neighbors."—Jake Halpern, author of Welcome to the New World
War, persecution, natural disasters, and climate change continue to drive millions around the world from their homes. In this “tender, intimate, and important book—a carefully reported rebuttal to the xenophobic narratives that define so much of modern American politics” (Sarah Stillman, staff writer, The New Yorker), journalist Susan Hartman follows 3 refugees over 8 years and tells the story of how they built new lives in the old manufacturing town of Utica, New York. Sadia, a Somali Bantu teenager, rebels against her mother; Ali, an Iraqi interpreter, creates a home with an American woman but is haunted by war; and Mersiha, a Bosnian baker, gambles everything to open a café.
Along the way, Hartman “illuminates the humanity of these outsiders while demonstrating the crucial role immigrants play in the economy—and the soul—of the nation" (Los Angeles Times). The 3 newcomers are part of an extraordinary migration over the past 4 decades; thousands fleeing war and persecution have transformed Utica, opening small businesses, fixing up abandoned houses, and adding a spark of vitality to forlorn city streets. Utica is not alone. Other Rust Belt cities—including Buffalo, Dayton, and Detroit—have also welcomed refugees, hoping to jump-start their economies and attract a younger population.
City of Refugees is a complex and poignant story of a small city but also of America—a country whose promise of safe harbor and opportunity is knotty and incomplete, but undeniably alive.
©2022 Susan Hartman (P)2022 Beacon PressListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Insightful and fascinating . . . will hone and reshape the reader's understanding of the impact of refugees on American society."—Booklist
"Hartman draws an intimate and captivating portrait of the struggle to build new lives while holding on to old values. Readers will gain vital insight into the immigrant experience in America."—Publishers Weekly
"Susan Hartman illuminates the humanity of these outsiders while demonstrating the crucial role immigrants play in the economy—and the soul—of the nation."—Stuart Miller, Los Angeles Times
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Narrator detracts from story
- By Laura on 01-16-19
By: Clemantine Wamariya, and others
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Street of Eternal Happiness
- Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road
- By: Rob Schmitz
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Modern Shanghai: a global city in the midst of a renaissance, where dreamers arrive each day to partake in a mad torrent of capital, ideas, and opportunity. Marketplace's Rob Schmitz is one of them. He immerses himself in his neighborhood, forging deep relationships with ordinary people who see in the city's sleek skyline a brighter future, and a chance to rewrite their destinies.
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Deserving of better audio
- By Rachael on 02-19-18
By: Rob Schmitz
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Born Bright
- A Young Girl's Journey from Nothing to Something in America
- By: C. Nicole Mason
- Narrated by: Robin Eller
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Born Bright, C. Nicole Mason's powerful memoir, is a story of reconciliation, constrained choices, and life on the other side of the tracks. Born in the 1970s in Los Angeles, California, Mason was raised by a beautiful but volatile 16-year-old single mother. Early on, she learned to navigate between an unpredictable home life and school, where she excelled. By high school, Mason was seamlessly straddling two worlds.
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Solid Book
- By Daryl on 11-06-16
By: C. Nicole Mason
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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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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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Fairyland
- A Memoir of My Father
- By: Alysia Abbott
- Narrated by: Alysia Abbott
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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A beautiful, vibrant memoir about growing up motherless in 1970s and 80s San Francisco with an openly gay father. After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberation - few of whom are raising a child. Steve throws himself into San Francisco's vibrant cultural scene.
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Great representation of the time
- By AvidReader22 on 06-07-19
By: Alysia Abbott
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Find Me Unafraid
- Love, Loss, and Hope in an African Slum
- By: Kennedy Odede, Jessica Posner
- Narrated by: Korey Jackson, Mandy Siegfried, P.J. Ochlan (foreword)
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Find Me Unafraid tells the uncommon love story between two uncommon people whose collaboration sparked a successful movement to transform the lives of vulnerable girls and the urban poor. With a foreword by Nicholas Kristof.
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A difficult and rewarding listen
- By R. MCRACKAN on 08-23-18
By: Kennedy Odede, and others
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The House at Sugar Beach
- A Memoir
- By: Helene Cooper
- Narrated by: Helene Cooper
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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At once a deeply personal memoir and an examination of a violent and stratified country, The House at Sugar Beach tells of tragedy, forgiveness, and transcendence with unflinching honesty and a survivor's gentle humor. And at its heart, it is a story of Helene Cooper's long voyage home.
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Can't recommend it
- By Taryn on 03-25-16
By: Helene Cooper
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Silver Like Dust
- One Family's Story of America's Japanese Internment
- By: Kimi Cunningham Grant
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Kimi’s Obaachan, her grandmother, had always been a silent presence throughout her youth. Sipping tea by the fire, preparing sushi for the family, or indulgently listening to Ojichan’s (grandfather’s) stories for the thousandth time, Obaachan was a missing link to Kimi’s Japanese heritage, something she had had a mixed relationship with all her life. Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, all Kimi ever wanted to do was fit in, spurning traditional Japanese cuisine and her grandfather’s attempts to teach her the language.
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A New LIfe
- By Kindle Customer on 08-14-12
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Bettyville
- By: George Hodgman
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself - an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook - in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure - the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict...
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Title Should Be Georgeville-It's All About George
- By Sara on 10-08-15
By: George Hodgman
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Kabul Beauty School
- An American Woman Goes behind the Veil
- By: Deborah Rodriguez, Kristin Ohlson
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Most Westerners working in Afghanistan spend their time tucked inside a military compound or embassy. Not Deborah Rodriguez. Here, she tells the story of the beauty school she founded in the middle of Kabul and of the vibrant women who were her students. When Rodriguez opened the Kabul Beauty School, she not only empowered her students with a new sense of autonomy but also made some of the closest friends of her life.
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Thumbs down
- By Becky on 06-14-07
By: Deborah Rodriguez, and others
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Army Wives
- The Unwritten Code of Military Marriage
- By: Tanya Biank
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Army Wives goes beyond the sound bites and photo ops of military life to bring listeners into the hearts and homes of today's military wives. Biank tells the story of four typical Army wives who, in a flash, find themselves in extraordinary circumstances that ultimately force them to redefine who they are as women and wives.
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True life, not the TV Show
- By M. Hill on 06-16-10
By: Tanya Biank
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The Song and the Silence
- A Story About Family, Race, and What Was Revealed in a Small Town in the Mississippi Delta While Searching for Booker Wright
- By: Yvette Johnson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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"Have to keep that smile", said Booker Wright in the 1966 NBC documentary Mississippi: A Self-Portrait. At the time Wright was a waiter in a Whites-only restaurant and a local business owner who would become an unwitting icon of the civil rights movement. For he did the unthinkable: Before a national audience, he described what life was truly like for the Black people of Greenwood, Mississippi.
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Exceeded every expectation
- By ZeeJ84 on 05-23-21
By: Yvette Johnson
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Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust
- By: Planaria Price, Helen Reichmann West
- Narrated by: Ilyana Kadushin
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet Barbara Reichmann, once known as Gucia Gomolinska: smart, determined, independent, and steadfast in the face of injustice. A Jew growing up in predominantly Catholic Poland during the 1920s and ’30s, Gucia studies hard, makes friends, falls in love, and dreams of a bright future. Her world is turned upside down when Nazis invade Poland and establish the first Jewish ghetto of World War II in her town of Piotrko´w Trybunalski.
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Amazing
- By Nordic Artisan on 07-09-18
By: Planaria Price, and others
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Laughing Without an Accent
- Adventures of an Iranian American, at Home and Abroad
- By: Firoozeh Dumas
- Narrated by: Firoozeh Dumas
- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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In the best-selling memoir Funny in Farsi, Firoozeh Dumas recounted her adventures growing up Iranian American in Southern California. Now she again mines her rich Persian heritage in Laughing Without an Accent, sharing stories both tender and humorous on being a citizen of the world, on her well-meaning family, and on amusing cultural conundrums, all told with insights into the universality of the human condition. (Hint: It may have to do with brushing and flossing daily.)
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Sigh
- By Sara on 01-29-14
By: Firoozeh Dumas
What listeners say about City of Refugees
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- "dcreader54"
- 12-20-22
Vivid portrait of three refugee families
Wonderfully vivid and intimate portrait of the Rust Belt city of Utica, New York, which had lost large percentages of its population, not to mention its vitality and hope for the future, until it began to welcome refugees. Hartman takes us deeply into the lives of three refugees—from Somalia, Iraq, and Bosnia—and their families, their struggles, their joys, and their immense creativity and industriousness as they come to terms with the traumas they’ve endured and make a new life for themselves in America. Samara Naeymi's narration was excellent.
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