Five Good Books About Refugees
A post about what they have in common
I recently wrote a post about Ban This Book by Alan Gratz, a book I really liked, so I got another one by him: Refugee. As I was reading it, I realized that I’ve read several books about refugees, and a couple of them were actually class novels I read in school. All of these are touching books - some are true stories about real people - and they left me thinking more about refugees and their experiences.
I didn’t want to only write about Alan Gratz’s book, so here I talk about what themes these books have in common. But first, let me summarize each book briefly.
First, Refugee by Alan Gratz follows three different stories about refugees in three different time periods. This makes it a sort of complex novel because the three stories alternate by chapter. Josef is a Jewish boy in Germany during WW2. The family flees to Florida (they lose Josef’s father on the journey), but are turned away from America. We later learn that Josef and his mother do not survive the war after they return to Europe. The second story is about Mahmoud, a Syrian boy in 2015. When his home is destroyed, he makes the long trek to Germany with his family. And Isabel is a Cuban girl who flees to Florida in a rickety handmade boat when her father is threatened because of his partaking in riots against President Castro. At the end of the book the three stories converge (a little) as some of the characters meet.
Second, A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park also has two intertwined stories. Salva is an 11-year old Sudanese boy who flees his home in 1985 due to the civil war there. He walks far distances to several refugee camps, and makes almost the whole journey on his own. Nya is a young village girl in Sudan in 2008. Every day, she walks the long distance to fetch water for her family. While she is not a refugee, she faces just as many hardships because of a war. At the end, Salva and Nya meet because Salva now runs an organization that brings clean water to people like Nya. This was a class novel I read this year in 5th grade. The book is based on the true story of Salva Dut (see Salva’s Ted Talk).
Third, When Stars Are Scattered is an autobiographical work by Omar Mohamed. It is written as a graphic novel (several hundred pages). Omar is a young boy in a refugee camp in Kenya. His younger brother Hassan, whom Omar takes care of, is nonverbal, so Omar has to do the chores, cook, clean, and study for the classes he has. We follow his journey until he is relocated to America along with his brother. I found this book because my sister was reading it and I borrowed it from her.
Fourth, Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai is also autobiographical. The book follows Hà and her family who flee their home during the Vietnam war. In America (they are in Alabama), Hà and her family do not fit in, and all she longs for is to meet her father whom she has never known. This is also a class novel, and very different from the other books because it’s written in verse.
Fifth, Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan is about a pampered and spoiled girl who lives in Mexico. When her father dies and her home is destroyed, she must move to a labor camp in America with her mother during the Great Depression. She is not used to the hard work there, and it is very hard for her to adjust to the new reality of her life.
So, what are some of the common themes of these five books?
Theme 1: Losing everything
Many books include something about a loss or losing something, or overcoming a challenge caused by a loss (for example, I wrote a post about orphans in literature recently). But each of the books I mention here is about losing everything. Each protagonist has lost their former life, their former home, and sometimes their families. Of course, this means unspeakable physical and emotional hardship.
This is incredibly realistic and unfortunately common in the real world. I looked it up on a United Nations website: there are 110 million forcibly displaced people worldwide as of mid-2023, and 36.4 million people are refugees (I think the difference is that refugees cross borders into another country but you also can be displaced within your own country, if there is a civil war for example). You might know someone who is or was or knows a refugee and faced the terrible situation of having lost virtually everything. Each of these books makes this experience more understandable for people lucky enough not to experience this.
Theme 2: Willpower
What made a great impression on me is no matter how terrible the challenge, these characters have the astonishing willpower to keep going and going. They never give up hope, they never relent. Keep in mind that some of books are autobiographical or based on a someone’s true story. So this isn’t just something someone made up, the willpower we read about in these books is real.
They also never complain. There is a scene in Refugee where one of the characters is waiting in line with many people but everyone, including the littlest of kids, is silent. Maybe they were exhausted, but mostly I think that even the kids all knew what was going on and they were focused on surviving.
Theme 3: The importance of family and love
All five books are also about family. They stick together, older siblings take care of younger ones, and they even die for each other. In A Long Walk To Water, Salva’s uncle dies so that Salva and the rest of the group can live. And in Refugee, Mahmoud gives away his baby sister so she can live. Afterwards, they search for her in every place they pass through.
It shows how unbreakable family bonds are. Each of the books has sad aspects like these. Family is the greatest source of hope when it’s together, but also the greatest source of pain when it breaks apart.
Theme 4 - Being a refugee may never fully ends
Some refugees in refugee camps have the (small) chance of getting relocated to a safe country, like the US. But even then, it’s very hard for refugees. Not all the books I mentioned talk about their lives after they get to safety, but Inside Out and Back Again does (more than half the book is about that).
Sometimes people don’t like the way refugees look or speak (for example, Hà in Inside out and Back Again can barely speak English). Others are suspicious of their culture, an example of this is when Hà is even forced to change her religion (she was baptized). She and her family aren’t treated well, and they miss their home. By the middle of the book, Hà even says that she would prefer “wartime in Vietnam to peacetime in Alabama” (or something very similar; I don’t have the book in front of me).
Why I liked these books
These books are not “entertaining” like many of the books I read and write about. They are often sad and intimidating though the books are also very suspenseful and it’s easy to root for the characters. But I find it important to know more about refugees given that there are so many in this world.
I also liked that the books are about hope. This goes for all the characters: they can’t give up, ever. There is a touching scene in Esperanza Rising that shows this theme. At the beginning, her father tells her that if she puts her ear to the ground, literally, she can hear the heartbeat of her homeland. When she arrives at the labor camp she tries that, but it doesn’t work. At the end, when she tries once more, she can hear the heartbeat. She didn’t give up on finding her new home.
Hope is in every one of these books. One phrase from Inside Out and Back Again stayed with me: “The past may shape us, but it does not define us.”
I, too, loved reading this. A great, engaging post about an important topic. And very moving.
I love how these books travel across different times and different geographies. That some are autobiographies. And, that they seem to use very different forms of expression (prose, verse, drawing) to express their author‘s creative writing.
I will check out Salva‘s Ted Talk — fascinating!
And indeed we have also had refugees in our family, as you know. When our dad, your granddad — Opa — was only 4 years old he fled from Hungary with his mom and 3 siblings. They survived the terrible bombing in Dresden in February of 1945. They lost all their belongings during just one night — but the most important thing was that they all survived, the five of them. It seemed like a miracle given how many died there. They even found his dad, who had not been travelling with them, a few weeks later, in Germany. And then they started over, from scratch. Hard to imagine what they went through, isn‘t it.
Thanks a lot for this great post dear Clara.
We've had a few refugees of our own in the family...
Not all authors of children's and YA books dare to deal with difficult topics like that, and it's admirable when they do it and manage to do it without just being devastating. You've learnt a lot of history by reading these books!