It is interesting to read about other people’s lives and learn about their struggles and achievements. It amazes me that people can live through horrific experiences and still find the strength to carry on.
The following books are written by or about former refugees whose lives were turned upside-down but who found the will to survive and create new lives in their adoptive countries.
Rahimeh Andalibian writes an emotional story about her tumultuous life in her book The Rose Hotel: A Memoir of Secrets, Loss and Love from Iran to America. Andalibian was growing up in a house next to the hotel her family owned when the Iranian revolution of 1979 forced her family to flee to London and then California. Andalibian explores many issues facing her family besides the hardships of starting a new life in a foreign country. Andalibian also discusses her family’s battle with mental illness, drug abuse and violence.
In Survival: A Refugee Life, Fred Bruemmer writes about his remarkable life’s journey. Bruemmer was born in Latvia and his parents were killed by the Soviets in 1945, and at 15 years of age, he was sent to a slave labour camp in Ukraine. Upon release from the camp, Bruemmer made his way to Germany and then to Ontario, where he worked as a gold miner and newspaper reporter. He became a Canadian citizen and lived in Montreal and the Arctic for 30 years. Bruemmer was a gifted photographer and wrote 25 books. He was awarded the Order of Canada in 1983.
Journalist Debi Goodwin traveled to a Kenyan refugee camp in 2008 to meet with 11 young women and men who had been awarded scholarships to Canadian universities. Goodwin followed the lives of the students over a period of one year and she tells their stories in her book Citizens of Nowhere: From Refugee Camp to Canadian Campus.
Lopez Lomong chronicles his life story in Running for My Life: One Lost Boy’s Journey from the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games. Lomong was six years old when he was captured by rebels in Sudan while he and his family were attending church. He was taken to a camp where boys were being trained to be soldiers. With help from some older boys, Lomong escaped and ran for three days to the Kenyan border, where he was taken in at a refugee camp. During his nine years in the camp, he saw Michael Johnson on TV, running in the Olympics, and Lomong decided he wanted to be a runner as well. Lomong was sponsored by a family in New York State, where he had an opportunity to compete on track and field teams in high school. He was also a champion runner at Northern Arizona University. Lomong eventually qualified for the Olympic Games.
David Starr was a principal of Edmonds community school in Burnaby. Many of the students and parents he met at the school were refugees from war-torn countries such as Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq. Starr interviewed eight families and wrote about their experiences in his book, From Bombs to Books: The Remarkable Stories of Refugee Children at an Exceptional Canadian School.
Starr also wrote about the support staff who helped the families who were trying to cope with terrifying memories of the past while beginning their new lives in British Columbia.
Please visit your local library to ask staff to help you find these and more incredible stories of brave refugees.
--A Good Read is a column by Tri-City librarians that is published on Wednesdays. Lori Nick works at Port Coquitlam’s Terry Fox Library.
