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Recommended Print & Digital Media

Books

Support KIN Through Amazon Smile!
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Foreign to Familiar
Sarah A. Lanier
​Foreign to Familiar is a splendidly written, well researched work on cultures. Anyone traveling abroad should not leave home without this valuable resource! Sarah's love and sensitivity for people of all nations will touch your heart. This short, friendly book creates within us a greater appreciation for our extended families around the world and an increased desire to better understand them.
Children's Books

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Outcasts United
Warren St. John
This book is the extraordinary tale of a refugee youth soccer team and the transformation of a small American town. Clarkston, Georgia, was a typical Southern town until it was designated a refugee settlement center in the 1990s, becoming the first American home for scores of families in flight from the world’s war zones—from Liberia and Sudan to Iraq and Afghanistan. Suddenly Clarkston’s streets were filled with women wearing hijab, the smells of cumin and curry, and kids of all colors playing soccer in any open space they could find. The town also became home to Luma Mufleh, an American-educated Jordanian woman who founded a youth soccer team to unify Clarkston’s refugee children and keep them off the streets. These kids named themselves the Fugees.

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Culture Shock! USA
Esther Wanning
Culture Shock! USA aims to do just that: help you understand what makes Americans tick. This book gives you valuable insights into the American lifestyle, values, and ways of doing business. Armed with such knowledge, settling down among Americans and doing business with them becomes an enjoyable experience.

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Bridges out of Poverty: Strategies for Professionals and Communities
Ruby K. Payne, Ph.D., Phillip E. DeVol, Terie D. Smith
Bridges Out of Poverty is a unique and powerful tool designed specifically for social, health, and legal services professionals. Based in part on Dr. Ruby K. Payne's myth shattering A Framework for Understanding Poverty, Bridges reaches out to the millions of service providers and businesses whose daily work connects them with the lives of people in poverty. In a highly readable format, you'll find case studies, detailed analysis, helpful charts and exercises, and specific solutions you and your organization can implement right now. If your business, agency, or organization works with people from poverty, only a deeper understanding of their challenges--and strengths--will help you partner with them to create opportunities for success.

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Same Kind of Different as Me: a Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the unlikely woman who bound them together.
Ron Hall and Denver Moore
A dangerous, homeless drifter who grew up picking cotton in virtual slavery. An upscale art dealer accustomed to the world of Armani and Chanel. A gutsy woman with a stubborn dream. A story so incredible no novelist would dare dream it. ​Gritty with pain and betrayal and brutality, this true story also shines with an unexpected, life-changing love.

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What Difference Do it Make?: Stories of Hope and Healing
Ron Hall and Denver Moore
What Difference Do It Make? continues the hard-to-believe story of hope and reconciliation that began with the New York Times bestseller, Same Kind of Different as Me. Ron Hall and Denver Moore, unlikely friends and even unlikelier coauthors—a wealthy fine-art dealer and an illiterate homeless African American—share the hard-to-stop story of how a remarkable woman’s love brought them together.

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The Girl Who Smiled Beads - A Story of War and What Comes After
Clemantine Wamariya and Elizabeth Weil
This autobiography tells the story of a young woman who is a refugee and whose family fled their home when she was only six years old. The book traces her family’s journey through refugee camps in seven African countries until Wamariya eventually makes it to the United States as a refugee. However, the story doesn’t end there…
​The Girl Who Smiled Beads describes a family’s struggle to hold onto their dignity, their fight to stay together, and the lingering trauma that lasts far past the actual violence they experienced. Even after arriving safely in the U.S., Wamariya describes wanting to challenge stereotypes and throughout the book, she pushes back. Should you see her as a poor, grateful, exotic refugee? No, she is a person of agency, feelings, and unique experience.

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The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You
Dina Nayeri
Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel–turned–refugee camp. Eventually she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement. 
Nayeri confronts notions like “the swarm,” and, on the other hand, “good” immigrants. She calls attention to the harmful way in which Western governments privilege certain dangers over others. With surprising and provocative questions, The Ungrateful Refugee challenges us to rethink how we talk about the refugee crisis.

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Welcome to the New World
Jake Halpren and Michael Sloan
After escaping a Syrian prison, Ibrahim Aldabaan and his family fled the country to seek protection in America. Among the few refugees to receive visas, they finally landed in JFK airport on November 8, 2016--Election Day. The family had reached a safe harbor, but woke up to the world of Donald Trump and a Muslim ban that would sever them from the grandmother, brothers, sisters, and cousins stranded in exile in Jordan. A graphic novel, Welcome to the New World tells the Aldabaans’ story. Resettled in Connecticut with little English, few friends, and even less money, the family of seven strive to create something like home. 

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After the Last Border
Jessica Goudeau
After the Last Border is an intimate look at the lives of two women. Mu Naw, a Christian from Myanmar struggling to put down roots with her family, was accepted after decades in a refugee camp at a time when America was at its most open to displaced families; and Hasna, a Muslim from Syria, agrees to relocate as a last resort for the safety of her family--only to be cruelly separated from her children by a sudden ban on refugees from Muslim countries. Writer and activist Jessica Goudeau tracks the human impacts of America's ever-shifting refugee policy as both women narrowly escape from their home countries and begin the arduous but lifesaving process of resettling in Austin--a city that would show them the best and worst of what America has to offer.

Essays/Articles/Chapters

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Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World
Vivek H. Murthy, MD

Humans are social creatures. In this simple and obvious fact lies both the problem and the solution to the current crisis of loneliness. In his groundbreaking book, the 19th surgeon general of the United States and the child of immigrants, Dr. Vivek Murthy, makes a case for loneliness as a public health concern--a root cause and contributor to many of the epidemics sweeping the world today from alcohol and drug addiction to violence to depression and anxiety. Loneliness, he argues, is affecting not only our health, but also how our children experience school, how we perform in the workplace, and the sense of division and polarization in our society.
Chapter 3 explores collective & individualistic cultures.

Courses/Studies

Develop Your Cultural Intelligence - from FutureLearn (5-weeks, online course produced by Purdue University)
Discover the importance of cultural intelligence, or 'CQ', and find out how to improve your own cultural intelligence.
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Intercultural Communication:  Dynamics of cultural identities in global interaction - from FutureLearn (5 weeks, online)
Gain vital insights to understand cross-cultural interactions with this introduction from a top Chinese international university.

Blogs/Other

Made Into America: Immigrant Stories Archive
A collection of immigrants' stories told by the people who lived them, with new posts added often.

​Culture Navigator
This locally-produced blog helps readers think about culture and connect across cultures.

I Am an Immigrant Stories

Every voice is unique. Every story is powerful. Read these stories of immigrants to the US from across the globe.

Refuge or Refusal: Turning Points in U.S. Immigration History
This travelling exhibit is housed at Kennesaw State University's Museum of History and Holocaust Education. Exhibit supplements, such as the Immigration and World History Timeline, are available on the website anytime.

About

Why KIN?
​Our Team
​KIN's History
Statement of Faith
Numbers & Need
KIN in the News

Contact KIN

865.235.1476​
[email protected]

Mailing
PO Box 31052
Knoxville, TN 37930
​
Office
6300 Deane Hill Drive
Knoxville, TN 37919
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  • Home
  • Get Involved
    • Start or Grow an Adult English Program
    • Volunteer >
      • LaMP
      • Embrace Program
      • Adult English Programs
      • 2nd Home
      • Occasional Opportunities
      • Translate/Interpret
    • Training >
      • Volunteer Adult English Teacher Training
      • ELL Volunteer Continuing Education
      • Cross-Cultural Communication Seminar
      • International Experience
      • Culture Orientation
    • Events & Festivals
    • Visit Businesses Owned by Local Internationals >
      • Restaurants
      • In-Home Medical Care
    • Finances & Donations
    • Personal Growth Resources
  • The Network
    • Partner Portal
    • Volunteer Portal
  • Resources for Local Internationals
    • 2nd Home for College Students
    • Immigration & Naturalization
    • Employment Assistance
    • Healthcare Resources
    • Driving Resources
    • Home Ownership & Money Management
  • Impact Stories
  • DONATE