Recommended Reading
Books
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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 book creates within us a greater appreciation for our extended families around the world and an increased desire to better understand them. |
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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 the 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 to: Redesign programs to better serve people you work with Build skill sets for management to help guide employees Upgrade training for front-line staff like receptionists, case workers, and managers; Improve treatment outcomes in health care and behavioral health care; Increase the likelihood of moving from welfare to work. 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. Spanning years, 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… “It’s strange, how you go from being a person who is away from home to a person with no home at all. You are unwanted, by everyone.” 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. 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. |
