Today I’m sharing with you one of my favorite reads from my doctorate program studies this summer. If you want a sense of what it’s like to be a refugee (both currently and historically), then check out this book by Alan Gratz. It’s been so popular that I couldn’t even get it at my library. The wait list was so long that I ordered it online in order to read it before my summer class ended.
Title: Refugee
Author: Alan Gratz
Genre: historical and contemporary (Yes, combined–and yes, I know that’s weird. Hang with me.)
Age group: young adult
In this novel, the reader follows the journey of three refugees, each from a different era and country but with remarkably similar stories. Josef is a Jewish boy whose father is captured and then released by the Nazis in 1930s Germany. When the Nazis release his father, it is under the stipulation that the entire family must leave the country. Isabel is an eleven-year-old girl living in Cuba in the 1990s. When Fidel Castro temporarily allows any Cubans the right to leave the country right after her father is wanted by the police for protesting in the streets, she and her family board a neighbor’s newly made boat and head over the dangerous sea to Miami. On the other side of the world in 2015, Mahmoud has been avoiding war and bullies in his hometown of Aleppo, Syria, for too long. When his family’s apartment is destroyed by bombs, they begin a long trek across Europe hoping to find a country that will take them in.
This is a gripping novel that beautifully shows how horrifically history keeps repeating itself. Even though these refuges are of different faiths and different countries of origin (Jewish, Catholic, and Muslim), we see how similar their stories are and how so many people across cultures have been forced to flee their homelands in order to save their lives. Because of the three different tales, this would be an excellent book to examine the similar challenges that all refugees (and often other immigrants) face when leaving their homeland and trying to enter a new one. Gatz beautifully ties the stories together and, with common themes and plot points, is able to show the connections across the stories.
I hear the audiobook is phenomenal, so I have checked that out of the library as well and hope to listen while on my commute to work.
