The Joys of Refugees

In our hyper partisan and over politicized culture, we’re always quick and anxious to talk about DACA, Dreamers, immigration, deportation, etc. Too often even the most well meaning stories are often lost in the weeds of policy and politics.

What we often forget, or can’t personally understand, is that all of this is about real people. About kids who are caught up in events they can’t control while getting impressions of how they are accepted or not as refugees. The result will shape how they grow up, what they will always believe about this country.
Even in the best of environment refugee resettlement is hard work. Although as my guest Helen Thorpe show us, in her book The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom, it should be filled with joy.

My conversation with Helen Thorpe:

Three Women at Home and at War

Those that have been through it, say that the experience of being in a combat zone is like no other. It is all consuming. In so many ways it eliminates the real world of life and its mundane everyday chores and problems.

Yet the men and women engaged in that effort, bring with them a life experience composed of precisely those problems. Sometimes the military is a means of escape, sometimes a training ground for life, frequently life changing. Yet most soldiers, men and women alike, must return to that real world. And when they do, everything changes once again.

That’s the story that Helen Thorpe tells about three women in Soldier Girls: The Battles of Three Women at Home and at War.

My conversation with Helen Thorpe:

The human side of immigration

With controversy over immigrants and immigration escalating, and the debate surrounding both the ability of undocumented immigrants to pursue the American dream of going to college and to access health care in this country, two recent books compassionate and intelligently tackle both of these issues.

First, Dr. Danielle Ofri, in her book Medicine in Translation: Journeys with My Patients tells us riveting stories about her immigrant patients at Bellevue. Living and dying in the foreign country we call home, they have much to teach us about the American way, in sickness and in health. Additionally, journalist Helen Thorpe in her book Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America gives us a powerful account of our young Mexican woman coming of age in Denver - two of whom have legal documents, and two whom do not.

My conversation with Danielle Ofri

Powered by Podbean.com

My conversation with Helen Thorpe

Powered by Podbean.com