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Editor's picks: books, films, and more about refugees, immigrants, and detention

March 11, 2008

This list includes Church World Service Immigration and Refugee Program staff, affiliate, and committee contributions, along with several FilmAid International suggestions. Send your favorites to

Refugees

Audio

One Thing (Weekend America series on what refugees brought with them to the United States), http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org search “One Thing.”

Books

  • By the Grace of God (Suruba Ibumando Georgette Wechsler and Howell Wechsler, Congo)
  • Do They Hear You When You Cry (Fauziya Kassindja, asylum seeker from Togo)
  • From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey (Pascal Khoo Thwe)
  • Grey Is the Color of Hope (Irina Ratushinskaya, USSR)
  • Journeys for Freedom: A New Look at America's Story by Susan Buckley and Elspeth Leacock
  • The Lost Boys of Sudan (Mark Bixler)
  • Lost on Earth: Nomads of the New World (Mark Fritz)
  • The Middle of Everywhere: Helping Refugees Enter the American Community , by Mary Pipher
  • Notes from the Hyena's Belly: An Ethiopian Boyhood (Nega Mezlekia)
  • Of Beetles and Angels (Mawi Asgedom, Ethiopia)
  • One Day the Soldiers Came by Charles London (interviews with refugee teens)
  • The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (Anne Fadiman, Hmong in America)
  • Surviving the Slaughter (Marie Beatrice Umutesi, Rwanda/Zaire)
  • What is the What (Dave Eggers, Sudan)
  • When Broken Glass Floats (Chanrithy Him, Cambodia)

Films

  • A Great Wonder (Sudanese "Lost Boys and Girls")
  • Balseros (Cubans)
  • Carly (a child's refugee experience), 7 minutes. Contact the CWS Film Library, 800-297-1516.
  • Darfur Diaries (Sudan)
  • God Grew Tired of Us (Sudanese "Lost Boys" – see also John Bul Dau's book by the same name)
  • Hotel Rwanda (Rwandan genocide)
  • The Letter (Somalis in Lewiston, Maine)
  • Lost Boys of Sudan (Sudanese)
  • My Mother's Village (Ukrainians)
  • Rain in a Dry Land (Somali Bantu)
  • The Refugee All-Stars (Sierra Leoneans)
  • Rosevelt's America: A Refugee's Inspiring Journey (Liberian refugee resettled to Chicago). Contact the CWS Film Library, 800-297-1516
  • Sometimes in April (Rwandan genocide)
  • The Tree That Remembers (Iranians)
  • UNHCR Web Videos ( www.unhcr.org )
  • UNHCR-Japan Film Festival ( www.refugeefilm.org)
  • Well-Founded Fear (U.S. asylum process)

Games

Immigration and Detention

Visit www.ilw.com/articles/2007,0502-black.shtm for books, films, reports, and websites on U.S. immigration detention.

Books

  • An Immigrant Class: Oral Histories from Chicago's Newest Immigrants by Jeff Libman
  • Deportation Nation by Dan Kanstroom (www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/KANDEP.html)
  • God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and the Changing American Religious Landscape by Peggy Levitt (New Press)
  • New Faces at the Crossroads: The World in Central Indiana, text by John Sherman, photographs and interviews by Jeffrey A. Wolin
  • Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy by John Bowe (Random House)
  • The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers by Jane Guskin and David Wilson (Monthly Review Press)
  • Religion and Social Justice for Immigrants edited by Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo (Rutgers University Press)
  • “They take Our Jobs!” and 20 Other Myths about Immigration by Aviva Chomsky (Beacon Press)

Films

Games

ICED – I Can End Deportation (www.icedgame.com)

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