Something to read over the holidays......

 If you are looking for something to read over the holidays, here are a few great books about refugees and their experiences coming to the United States:

What is the What  by Dave Eggers

This is a novel written by Dave Eggers and drawn from the real-life story of Valentino Achak Deng, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. The title comes from a local story about the reward of choosing what’s known over what’s unknown. What is the What describes the interminable walking, the militia and bombs, starvation and disease, lions and crocodiles that kill countless young boys as they attempt to find refuge in Ethiopia and Kenya. Eventually many of the Lost Boys gain entry to the United States, and they form a vibrant community displaced across the country but constantly in touch by cell phone. Valentino ends up in Atlanta, adjusting to the fact that America offers its own evils and injustices.

Remix: Conversations with Immigrant Teenagers by Marina Budhos

In fourteen interviews with new Americans from Latin America, Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean, Marina Budhos found many remarkable stories. Muslim girls in New York struggling between rigid home rules and high school pressures. Russians in L.A. testing out the strangeness of American teenage customs. Hmong boys in Wisconsin trying to be true to two unfamiliar cultures. But when she met young people whose experience matched her Guyanese father's, Budhos changed from being a reporter to being a fellow traveler between worlds. Remix faces two ways: it exposes the too-often hidden world of immigrants, and it also reveals, through their insightful eyes, what it means to be a teenager in America.

The Immigrant Advantage: What We Can Learn from Newcomers to America about Health, Happiness and Hope by Claudia Kolker

Each chapter in this book focuses on a specific cultural tradition that has made an immigrant group stronger and/or healthier than their American counterparts. These include descriptions of South-Asian lending groups that have led to economic prosperity among Vietnamese refugees, sheltering of extended family members by west-Indians in multi-generational homes, neighborhood social cohesion in Latino communities that lead to better health, and strong education traditions in Korean and Chinese homes. This book identifies strengths in traditional immigrant cultures that can benefit several generations of families after their arrival in the United States.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures  by Anne Fadiman 

This book chronicles the struggles of a Hmong refugee family and their interactions with the health care system in Merced, California. On the most basic level, the book tells the story of the family's second youngest and favored daughter, Lia Lee who is diagnosed with severe epilepsy, and the culture conflict that obstructs her treatment. Through miscommunications about medical dosages and parental refusal to give certain medicines due to mistrust and misunderstandings, and the inability of the doctors to have more empathy toward the traditional Hmong lifestyle or try to learn more about the Hmong culture, Lia's condition worsens. The dichotomy between the Hmong's perceived spiritual factors and the Americans' perceived scientific factors comprises the overall theme of the book.

The Middle of Everywhere by Mary Pipher 

Transformation of Lincoln, Nebraska after US Office of Refugee Resettlement decided it was a “preferred community for newly-arrived refugees.” Through a series of short stories Mary Pipher explores the experiences of different refugee groups in her home town of Lincoln.