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Recommended Reads
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After the Last Border: Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America
Jessica Goudeau
The Middle of Everywhere: Helping Refugees Enter the American Community
Mary Pipher
City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp
Ben Rawlence
When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor…and Yourself
Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert
Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion, & Truth in the Immigration Debate
Matthew Soerens & Jenny Yang
My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World’s Deadliest Migration Route
Sally Hayden
We Thought It Would be Heaven: Refugees in an Unequal America
Blair Sackett & Annette Lareau
Refugee
Alan Gratz
Everything Sad is Untrue: A True Story
Daniel Nayeri
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Anne Fadiman
Recommended Children’s Reads
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What Is a Refugee?
Elise Gravel
Where Are You From?
Yamile Saied Méndez
Refugees & Migrants
Ceri Roberts
Wishes
Mượn Thị Văn
Thank you, Omu
One Mora
When Stars Are Scattered
Omar Mohamed & Victoria Jamieson
A Different Pond
Thi Bui & Bao Phi
Lubna & Pebble
Wendy Meddour
Recommended Films
While not necessarily “easy” to watch, these films help us visualize the journeys that our new neighbors take to get to us.
This is Home: A Refugee Story (2018)
An important documentary following the story of four Syrian refugee families as they navigate the cultural differences and challenges of settling into a new life in Baltimore, MD. “THIS IS HOME goes beyond the statistics, headlines, and political rhetoric to tell deeply personal stories, putting a human face on the global refugee crisis.” Winner of the 2018 Sundance Film Festival’s Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary and a duPont-Columbia Award in 2019.
4.1 Miles (2016)
A hard-hitting, Oscar-nominated short documentary providing a glimpse into the harrowing boat ride thousands of asylum seekers and migrants take desperate to reach European shores. It does so while following a Greek coast guard captain’s efforts to rescue thousands at sea before they drown.
God Grew Tired of Us (2006)
A powerful documentary that follows the resettlement experience of three Sudanese “Lost Boys” in different parts of the U.S. It also provides their backstory of fleeing Sudan and living in a refugee camp in Kenya. ”[F]ilmmaker Christopher Quinn spent four years following them on their journey in a new and unfamiliar land…as they struggle to build new lives for themselves, acquaint themselves with the ‘American’ way of doing things, the difficulties of being black in a primarily white culture, and try to track down the friends and family they were forced to leave behind.”
Refugee (2016)
The story of a refugee/mother, the heartache and cost of leaving children behind to seek asylum and a better future for her family in the U.S., and the longing for and meaning of reunification.
Refugee (2020)
A raw documentary that follows the excruciating struggle and long journey of displaced people, many of whom are children, traveling over land and sea to try to find safe refuge in Europe. It focuses, in particular, on the challenges and heartache of a Syrian family – the mother who makes it to Germany and her husband and two young children trying to be reunited with her, but trapped by closed borders and stuck in camps and bureaucratic processes.
Human Flow (2017)
Artist, activist and director Ai Weiwei captures the global refugee crisis - the greatest human displacement since World War II - I in this breathtakingly epic film journey HUMAN FLOW.
Other Resources
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UNHCR Global Trends Report 2024
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
UNHCR's Global Trends report presents key statistical trends and the latest official statistics on refugees, asylum-seekers, internally displaced and stateless people worldwide. At the end of 2024, 123.2 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations and events seriously disturbing public order.
National Immigration Forum Newsletter
National Immigration Forum
Founded in 1982, the National Immigration Forum advocates for the value of immigrants and immigration to our nation. In service to this mission, the Forum promotes responsible federal immigration policies, addressing today’s economic and national security needs while honoring the ideals of our Founding Fathers, who created America as a land of opportunity.
Click on their logo to access their newsletter sign-up page and stay up to date on the state of immigration in the US.
Recipes for Refuge Cook Book: Culinary Journeys to America
Refugee Women’s Alliance
Recipes for Refuge is a delicious and unique collection offering readers an experience that transcends mere cookery. First, the food. These are the recipes that are passed down from mother to daughter, father to son, recipes that connect these global refugees to the place they once called home. Transport yourself with Salomé's Patacones con Hogoa, Sookjai's Golden Triangle Chicken Curry, Mahnaz's Pomegranate Khoresh, or Rahima's Bariis--the famed rice dish of Somalia--accompanied by gorgeous full-color photographs. Included too are the journey stories of these transplanted cooks, tracing harrowing flight from Saigon as it falls, years spent in Kenyan refugee camps, and dangerous border crossings to escape the Eritrean-Ethiopian conflict, with stunning portraits that reveal the faces behind the term "refugee."
Parwana: Recipes and stories from an Afghan kitchen
Durkhanai Ayubi
Interwoven with traditional Afghan recipes is one family's story of a region long afflicted by war, but with much more at its heart. Author Durkhanai Ayubi's parents, Zelmai and Farida Ayubi, fled Afghanistan with their young children in 1985, at the height of the Cold War.
When their family-run restaurant Parwana opened its doors in Adelaide in 2009, their vision was to share with the world their family memories through the delights of Afghan cuisine, infused with Afghanistan's rich historical culture and traditions of generosity and hospitality, to offer a more complete picture of the country they had left behind.
These fragrant and flavourful recipes have been in the family for generations and include rice dishes, dumplings, curries, meats, Afghan pastas, chutneys and pickles, soups and breads, drinks and desserts. Some are everyday meals, some are celebratory special dishes. Each has a story to tell.