Central Skagit Library District

"Refugee advocate Luma Mufleh writes of her tumultuous journey to reconcile her identity as a gay Muslim woman and a proud Arab-turned-American refugee"--

Ahmedi was born just as the war between the mujahideen and the Soviets reaches its peak in Afghanistan. The sounds of gunfire and fighter planes were as normal to her as the sounds of traffic or children playing are to a schoolgirl in America. When she stepped on a land mine on her way to school, she began to learn--slowly--that ordinary people, often strangers, have immense power to save lives and restore hope. She was taken from a childhood in Afghanistan,...

Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were thunder. In 1994, she and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years migrating through seven African countries, searching for safety -- perpetually hungry, imprisoned, and abused, enduring and escaping refugee camps,...

"Trip. My parents started using that word about a year ago--'one day, you'll take a trip to be with us. Like an adventure.' Javier's adventure is a three-thousand-mile journey from his small town in El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border. He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling alone except for a group of strangers...