A collection of stories of refugees in America from the founder of the Every Campus a Refuge organization.
Jordan-born Abdo, a professor of English at Guilford College, where she founded ECAR, begins with her own experience as the daughter and granddaughter of Palestinian refugees. She then introduces readers to seven refugees from around the world—Palestine, Burma, Uganda, Iraq, Syria—who have started new lives near where the author lives in North Carolina. Stressing repeatedly that anyone can become a refugee, Abdo effectively demonstrates what many in the U.S. fail to grasp: “All refugees have lived lives that are distinct and individual—complicated, rich, layered. Something happens in their lives that fractures them from their souls, their homes. A fracture that threatens their safety. And it is a fracture they are not allowed to forget. Their future depends on forever remembering their persecution.” By following the unique journeys of these courageous individuals, the author reveals the often terrifying and overwhelming process of resettlement. These biographical portraits are thorough and compassionate, covering the initial reason for escape, life in refugee camps, endless questioning by various government agencies, and countless obstacles to putting down roots in a strange land. Abdo ends with an in-depth examination of the politicized and sometimes racist terms used to describe refugees, nearly all of whom merely seek a better life. Unfortunately, most don’t find it. Even with organizations like ECAR, writes the author, “less than 1 percent of the world’s refugees are ever resettled. The majority of refugees remain, sometimes for generations, in camps a bomb-sound away from the towns they fled, across a relatively recently created national border.” By humanizing and contextualizing the refugee experience, Abdo forces readers to confront their own preconceived notions about a global crisis that will only become more widespread in the years to come.
A moving and timely book that strips away misleading politics to reveal the complexities of real human lives.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 979-1-58642-342-1
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Steerforth
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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Sedaris remains stubbornly irreverent even in the face of pandemic lockdowns and social upheaval.
In his previous collection of original essays, Calypso (2018), the author was unusually downbeat, fixated on aging and the deaths of his mother and sister. There’s bad news in this book, too—most notably, the death of his problematic and seemingly indestructible father at 96—but Sedaris generally carries himself more lightly. On a trip to a gun range, he’s puzzled by boxer shorts with a holster feature, which he wishes were called “gunderpants.” He plays along with nursing-home staffers who, hearing a funnyman named David is on the premises, think he’s Dave Chappelle. He’s bemused by his sister Amy’s landing a new apartment to escape her territorial pet rabbit. On tour, he collects sheaves of off-color jokes and tales of sexual self-gratification gone wrong. His relationship with his partner, Hugh, remains contentious, but it’s mellowing. (“After thirty years, sleeping is the new having sex.”) Even more serious stuff rolls off him. Of Covid-19, he writes that “more than eight hundred thousand people have died to date, and I didn’t get to choose a one of them.” The author’s support of Black Lives Matter is tempered by his interest in the earnest conscientiousness of organizers ensuring everyone is fed and hydrated. (He refers to one such person as a “snacktivist.”) Such impolitic material, though, puts serious essays in sharper, more powerful relief. He recalls fending off the flirtations of a 12-year-old boy in France, frustrated by the language barrier and other factors that kept him from supporting a young gay man. His father’s death unlocks a crushing piece about dad’s inappropriate, sexualizing treatment of his children. For years—chronicled in many books—Sedaris labored to elude his father’s criticism. Even in death, though, it proves hard to escape or laugh off.
A sweet-and-sour set of pieces on loss, absurdity, and places they intersect.Pub Date: May 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-39245-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
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A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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