Son Of Refugees

A touching, timely and tender exploration of refugees and migration for the youngest readers.

A moving, poetic narrative and child-friendly illustrations follow the heartbreaking, ultimately hopeful journey of a little girl who is forced to become a refugee. The day war came there were flowers on the windowsill and my father sang my baby brother back to sleep. Imagine if, on an ordinary day, after a morning of studying tadpoles and drawing birds at school, war came to your town and turned it to rubble. Imagine if you lost everything and everyone, and you had to make a dangerous journey all alone. Imagine that there was no welcome at the end, and no room for you to even take a seat at school. And then a child, just like you, gave you something ordinary but so very, very precious. In lyrical, deeply affecting language, Nicola Davies’s text combines with Rebecca Cobb’s expressive illustrations to evoke the experience of a child who sees war take away all that she knows.

A Finalist for the 2019 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction "Nayeri combines her own experience with those of refugees she meets as an adult, telling their stories with tenderness and reverence.” —The New York Times Book Review "Nayeri weaves her empowering personal story with those of the ‘feared swarms’ . . . Her family’s escape from Isfahan to Oklahoma, which involved waiting in Dubai and Italy, is wildly fascinating . . . Using energetic prose, Nayeri is an excellent conduit for these heart–rending stories, eschewing judgment and employing care in threading the stories in with her own . . . This is a memoir laced with stimulus and plenty of heart at a time when the latter has grown elusive.” —Star–Tribune (Minneapolis) Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel–turned–refugee camp. Eventually she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement. In these pages, a couple fall in love over the phone, and women gather to prepare the noodles that remind them of home. A closeted queer man tries to make his case truthfully as he seeks asylum, and a translator attempts to help new arrivals present their stories to officials. Nayeri confronts notions like “the swarm,” and, on the other hand, “good” immigrants. She calls attention to the harmful way in which Western governments privilege certain dangers over others. With surprising and provocative questions, The Ungrateful Refugee challenges us to rethink how we talk about the refugee crisis. “A writer who confronts issues that are key to the refugee experience.” —Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer and The Refugees

There is a wide gap between the psychological needs of the children of refugees and the services provided. Refugees' home countries, cultures, and social make-up are widely diversified, and their needs cannot be readily consolidated. This diversity of interest and need goes unacknowledged by the service-providers who may treat them as a single, homogenous group. Some refugees' needs are exaggerated, while others are ignored. This approach often ignores the justifiable and legitimate interest of refugees' psychological wellbeing. Many children of refugees may struggle with questions of race, ethnicity, language barriers, and other socio-political and economic issues that can influence their mental health and psychological wellbeing. Preoccupations of the child's emotions with those issues therefore have effects on child personality formations. Apart from having an overview of the relevant processes involved in therapeutic work and possible challenges therein, it is also important for the therapist to have an overview of the child's situation in the past and any current issues, which this book provides.

Provides interviews with twenty-three young Iraqi children who have moved away from their homeland and tells of their fears, challenges, and struggles to rebuild their lives in foreign lands as refugees of war.

In this book, while the author is translating his father's Greek manuscripts written some thirty years ago, he describes life, suffering, and struggle to survive in the cruel world of the twentieth century. His father and mother both born in Greek cities of Asia Minor escaped the Turkish brutality and the Hellenic Holocaust of 1916 to 1922. They came to Greece in 1922 and survived the difficult and inhumane conditions of the refugee settlements. There they met, were married some time in 1935, and after losing their first child to poverty and conditions unfit to human dignity, they brought to this world in 1937 the author of this book, who was followed by seven other children. The author and five of the siblings are still alive today.

A new-historical, realistic, social-political novel. A current, strong reference to the refugee crisis, which strikes the unescorted innocent refugee children.At the beginning of the autumn of 2014, Leto, a teacher of Greek literature is assigned in a secondary school of Kos, as a contract teacher. There, she meets a lot of refugees from Syria, who arrive on the island, with old and rusty boats, from the Turkish shores. After a big wreck, she consciously decides to help them as a volunteer in “Hippokratio” hospital of Kos. There, she is responsible for three heavily injured men from Syria. One of them is Aslan, a friend from their common post graduate studies in Aberdeen University, Scotland. In the same room, there are two other friends of him, Jamal and Ossama. They all accompany nine refugee children, orphans of the war. Leto is involved in the life of the three injured men and the nine refugee children. The refugee issue becomes her own issue, a part of her, which she wholeheartedly expresses through playing her guitar to her students of Kos throughout her whole life. She challenges the attitudes of European Union and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, as well as all the involved nations. She stands by the unescorted refugee children, sensitively, who become victims of dangerous criminals and they get lost in den of vices of prostitution, pederasty, trafficking in human organs, drugs and so on, on their way to the Central and North Europe. Leto’s strong love for Aslan and her love for children leads her to the Central Europe where she participates energetically to the refugee matter, and she takes position practically, to an item which overconcerns all Europe, the whole world, the United Nations, as it brutally beats all the nations of Mediterranean Sea, pandering hidden and illegal interests, but obvious too.A book which challenges racism, xenophobia and religious prejudice, stands by the human and supports the universal values that are torn up by the war, the civil war, the total hatreds, and fanatics. It is asking for solidarity and faithful implementation of laws and rules of the U.N., which are closely linked to the human rights.

"A resistance novel for our time." - The New York Times "A hopeful story about recovery, empathy, and the bravery of young people." - Booklist "This well-crafted and suspenseful novel touches on the topics of refugees and immigrant integration, terrorism, Islam, Islamophobia, and the Syrian war with sensitivity and grace." - Kirkus, Starred Review Fourteen-year-old Ahmed is stuck in a city that wants nothing to do with him. Newly arrived in Brussels, Belgium, Ahmed fled a life of uncertainty and suffering in Aleppo, Syria, only to lose his father on the perilous journey to the shores of Europe. Now Ahmed’s struggling to get by on his own, but with no one left to trust and nowhere to go, he’s starting to lose hope. Then he meets Max, a thirteen-year-old American boy from Washington, D.C. Lonely and homesick, Max is struggling at his new school and just can’t seem to do anything right. But with one startling discovery, Max and Ahmed’s lives collide and a friendship begins to grow. Together, Max and Ahmed will defy the odds, learning from each other what it means to be brave and how hope can change your destiny. Set against the backdrop of the Syrian refugee crisis, award-winning author of Jepp, Who Defied the Stars Katherine Marsh delivers a gripping, heartwarming story of resilience, friendship and everyday heroes. Barbara O'Connor, author of Wish and Wonderland, says "Move Nowhere Boy to the top of your to-be-read pile immediately."