What Are Fellow CVRAN Members Reading?
A few weeks ago, we sent out a request to CVRAN members asking if they had read any good books focused on refugees, asylum seekers, or immigration. Here are several of those recommendations along with links to help you learn more about the books. We’ll send out more in the next few weeks. Hope you find something to enjoy yourself or want to share!
Non-Fiction
Solito by Javier Zamore is the author’s own story. He leaves his grandparents behind in El Salvador and, at the age of 10, travels with a coyote to join his parents in the US.
Two CVRAN members recommended this book. One said “…..recommended it to my entire book group. It is a memoir about an undocumented child crossing alone to meet his parents who were already here. It is really compelling. Highly recommend.”
To learn more about Solito, take a look at these online book reviews:
- ‘Solito’ is a personal story of immigration that sheds light on the universal (NPR)
- The harrowing migration story of one 9-year-old child (NY Times)
Solito is available at the Kellogg Hubbard and Waterbury Public libraries.
Fiction
Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck is the story of Richard, a widowed professor living in Berlin. He lives a quiet routine life until he takes the time to talk to some African refugees staging a hunger strike. As he gets to know them, everything changes.
To learn more about Go, Went, Gone, take a look at these online book reviews:
- A novelist’s powerful response to the refugee crisis (The New Yorker)
- Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck review – humanizing migration (The Guardian)
Go, Went, Gone is available at the Kellogg Hubbard and Waterbury Public Libraries as well as the Aldrich Library in Barre.
Graphic Novel
When Stars Are Scattered by Omar Mohamed and Victoria Jamieson shares the lived experience of Mohamed himself as a child in the Dadaab Refugee camp in Kenya. He lived there for 18 years after fleeing civil war in his homeland of Somalia.
To learn more about When Stars Are Scattered, scroll through these online resources:
- The National Book Foundation, finalist for the year 2020
- This engaging, heartwarming story does everything one can ask of in a book, and then some (Kirkus Review)
- Official trailer for When Stars Are Scattered