Refugee Stories

I believe that a refugee story is not much more different than any other story told. While yes, many of their stories include events and memories that many of us could never possibly understand or put ourselves in their position, but at the same time, as seen in God Grew Tired of Us and Mawi Asgedom’s Of Beetles and Angles many of their recollections in their journey to America have been stories that have been told for generations.

In both Mawi’s narrative of coming to America in the mid 80s and that of Daniel, Panther, and John Buhl coming in the mid 2000s, we can see a very similar story. They shared a conflict in leaving their friends and family, and then once in America, they all struggled to find a fitting place in society. From Mawi and his struggles in elementary school, to the Lost Boy’s battles with balancing work, paying bills, and fighting back the crushing loneliness of living alone after being surrounded by “brothers” for 15 years, we can see some striking similarities.

But through this entire struggle, this is not the first time this story has been told in America. Refugees are simply the latest addition to the long list of those people who have come to America looking for a better life. “So it was that my father started talking about a paradise called Amerikha, a distant land where everyone had a future. He told us that money grew on trees in Amerikha. Everyone was rich. Everyone had a home. Everyone had food. And Everyone had peace.” (Asgedom, 11) It is this picture of perfection given to America that has been around much longer than when Mawi and his family came to America in the 1980s. Millions of immigrants poured through Ellis Island around the turn of the century, all under the same impression as Mawi’s father, America was the promise land, there was happiness to be had in America. These immigrants faced the same plight, if not one worse, than the stories of the refugees. While refugees were given assistance from outside programs, those who came to America in the early 1900s did not have the same fate. Dropped on the shores of a foreign land, they were on their own, no one to check on them and whether or not they were surviving in this new, alien place.

Overall, while I believe that the refugee stories we have read and watched are indeed important and unique with their own personal stories, I do not believe they are so much different than other stories that have already been told. We have a very rich historical background living in America, and when one looks, they can find millions of stories just like those of the refugees.