It is not an easy road—but hope is the oxygen of my life.  These insightful words of Meron Semedar, a refugee from Eritrea, reflect the feelings of the eleven men and women featured in this book.  These refugees  share their extraordinary experiences  of fleeing oppression, violence and war in their home countries in search of a better life in the United States.
 
Each chapter of Refugees in America focuses on an individual from a different country, from a 93-year-old Polish grandmother who came to the United States after surviving the horrors of Auschwitz to a young undocumented immigrant from El Salvador who became an American college graduate, despite being born impoverished and blind. Some have found it easy to reinvent themselves in the United States, while others have struggled to adjust to America, with its new culture, language, prejudices, and norms.
 
Each of them speaks candidly about their experiences to author Lee T. Bycel, who provides illuminating background information on the refugee crises in their native countries. Their stories help reveal the real people at the center of political debates about US immigration.
 
Giving a voice to refugees from such far-flung locations as South Sudan, Guatemala, Syria, and Vietnam, this book weaves together a rich tapestry of human resilience, suffering, and determination.

Profits from the sale of this book will be donated to two organizations that are doing excellent refugee resettlement work and offer many opportunities to support refugees: HIAS (founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) hias.org International Rescue Committee (IRC) rescue.org
 

 

LEE T. BYCEL is a humanitarian activist, Rabbi, teacher and author, who serves as the Sinton Visiting Professor of Holocaust, Ethics and Refugee Studies at the University of San Francisco.  He has visited refugee camps in Darfur, Chad, South Sudan, Rwanda, Kenya, Ethiopia and Haiti. He has written extensively about the plight of refugees, and has secured much needed funding for medical clinics in refugee camps.  
 
DONA KOPOL BONICK is an esteemed portraitist and artist whose photographic career spans three decades. The photography director for the inaugural BottleRock music festival, her works have appeared in many books, art museums, and private collections.

ISHMAEL BEAH whose work has been published in over 30 countries, is the New York Times Bestselling author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Radiance of Tomorrow: A Novel, and Little Family: A Novel.

Foreword by Ishmael Beah

Introduction
1          Meron Semedar, Eritrea
Hope Is the Oxygen of My Life
2          Noemi Perez-Lemus, Guatemala
Children Who Returned from a Walk through Hell
3          Asinja Badeel, Iraq and the Yazidis
The Imaginary Girl
4          Deng Ajak Jongkuch, South Sudan
He Threw Garbage on Me
5          Sidonia Lax, Poland
            The Apple Lady
6          Malk Alamarsh, Syria
The Walls Have Ears
7          Vanny Loun, Cambodia
A River of Memories
8          Darwin Velasquez, El Salvador
            Blind but the Heart Can See
9          Kien Ha Quach Thien, Vietnam
            The Life Before and the Life After
10        Wilita Sanguma, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)
            They Bombed My Church on Christmas Day 1998
11        Jawad Khawari, Afghanistan

Empty Walls
Acknowledgments
Index