Somewhere in the Unknown World: A Collective Refugee Memoir

“Irene laughed with the friends she had made during the year of calling Minnesota home—blond Sarah, Felicia, an African-American; Kim and Linh, who were Vietnamese American; and Dina and Julie, who were Russian and had also left Minsk behind.”

This passage emphasizes the diversity of Minnesota, the author’s home state. The diversity of the group—including people born in America and immigrants from Russia and Vietnam—highlights The Importance of Community in Times of War or Displacement.

“Every Saturday, in those conversations, they become a full family: a mother, a father, and their children, voices celebrating their gratitude for each other’s safety and small successes.”

Awo Ahmed’s family is separated by war in Somalia: Awo lives in America with her mother and siblings while her father lives in Kenya. This passage indicates that their weekly phone calls are precious and essential to keeping the family together, highlighting the power of technology to support immigrants and refugees.

“I didn’t dare look back. I listened but heard nothing, only silence as I walked farther and farther away. I never found out what became of the teenage boy. I can’t know, if I want to be safe.”

Yara Hassan’s family is displaced by war in Syria: In this passage, Yara describes being stopped by a soldier alongside a teenage boy. Yara believes that she “can’t know” what happened to the boy because the truth would both put her in danger and potentially destroy her confidence, which she feels is essential to survival.

“I asked them things that the men—in positions similar to mine—had never asked: ‘Why do you feel unsafe at the camp hospital?”

The narrator of Chapter 4 is a refugee aid worker who was displaced by war in Bosnia as a child; her own history and experience are essential to her work. This passage indicates that her personal subject position as a woman is also important, allowing her to connect with female refugees in a way that a man could not, and highlighting The Unique Challenges of War and Displacement for Women and Children.

“I had to become brave and I had to use whatever means I could find to save the pieces of myself that were in danger of dying in that lonely apartment where I waited for peace.”

The first section of the collection focuses on the stories of children displaced by violent conflict. This passage supports Yang’s general argument that children raised in violence are forced to mature quickly in order to survive.

“While I will never agree that the indiscriminate killing was justified, Liberia was a nation birthing itself, and the delivery was bloody and disastrous.”

This passage exemplifies the cognitive dissonance faced by people displaced by civil wars. The narrator believes that civil war is necessary, but remains disturbed by the violence it entails.

“In my union with the woman who decided to dedicate her life to me, we had three children together. Three stateless children, citizens of no country, recognized by no nation.”

The collection demonstrates a thematic interest in The Unique Challenges of War and Displacement for Women and Children. Ironically, the narrator of this passage, Kaw Thaw, abandons his partner and children in Thailand in order to pursue an independent life away from the refugee camp.

“Take people fighting a war, put them in a new country with more powerful people, and suddenly their fight against each other is no longer as important as their fight to merely survive.”

Part 2 of the collection describes the consequences of civil wars across the world. This passage highlights the power and privilege disparity inherent in the experience of displacement, suggesting that the challenges of life in the United States make the conflicts of these civil wars seem insignificant for refugees.

“After Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait began, the American planes had flown over our southern village of Al Fahood dropping sheets of paper with a message from the then president of the United States of America, George H.W. Bush, encouraging the people of Iraq to stand up to the power of Saddam Hussein.”

The chapters in the second section explicitly identify the external forces that led to civil wars in the various countries represented. In this example, the narrator attributes her grandfather’s political assassination to the influence of American propaganda.

“The warlords, funded by the United States of America on one side and the Russians on the other, came to Kandahar to wage their battles.”

Chapter 8 suggests that decades of violence in Afghanistan can be attributed to the direct interference of Russian and American forces, who saw Afghanistan as a proxy battle for their conflicts. This idea supports the collection’s larger interest in the destabilizing effects of Western influence.

“I said, ‘If I am human, what is my right? How does a human being, biological in every way, get documents of their humanity?”

Afghanzada, the narrator of this chapter, is given three passports by the human trafficker he paid to get him out of Afghanistan; he destroys these passports before arriving in Sweden. The narrative suggests that the lack of identification causes an identity crisis.

“In the big capital city, only one massacre is on the books but there were more than that. Beyond the massacre of December 28, 1974, there were others.”

The Necessity and Pain of Remembrance forms an important theme in the third section of the collection. In this passage, the narrator bears witness to unrecorded massacres in Eritrea during the revolutionary years. This act of remembrance is a microcosm of the book’s larger mission to collect and record refugee stories.

“In Sudan I learned that beyond the guns and tortuous murders committed in warfare, when a country fights, it must do so on all fronts; diseases were rampant in the conditions of our lives.”

As the title indicates, this chapter focuses on the unconfirmed and unrecorded deaths that are inevitable part of war. In this instance, Michael observes 700 deaths due to cholera in a refugee camp—deaths not included in the total number of reported war casualties.

“The heart of a wife who did everything hard so her husband, in a world that had given up on him, could not give up on her and their life together. Now her heart hurt.”

This passage points to the collection’s thematic interest in The Unique Challenges of War for Women and Children. Chue Moua sacrifices her mental and physical health for her husband and children in order to keep their home life happy and stable throughout war and displacement. The chapter details her mental health struggles as she grapples with grief and trauma.

“I wanted to tell him about the war, but I could see that he was looking at the watch on his wrist, so I stopped.”

At the Natalis center, Chue Moua is greeted by a young interpreter who is sympathetic to her struggles and tells her she isn’t alone. This passage suggests that not all of the mental health professionals she encounters are as empathetic.

“I had been a Hmong soldier trained by the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. We were told we had to fight communism. I was a young man from a family of farmers.”

The narrative of Fong Lee’s life is driven by American intervention. As a 16-year-old, he is drafted by an army funded by the CIA in order to fight American proxy battles. This passage suggests that he had no ideological connection to the fight against communism, emphasizing the idea that foreign powers viewed Hmong soldiers not as people, but as tools to reify their own global political agenda.

“They don’t know that I cannot forget those two girls, their eyes that night, round like the moon in the high sky, looking at me. The lie I told. The lie I carry.”

Continuing the third section’s focus on The Necessity and Pain of Remembrance, this passage suggests that the traumatic experiences of war become indelible memories in the minds and bodies of victims, forcing them to relive their trauma for years to come.

“When the food-pantry trucks came, the children ran to line up for small bags of rice, expired baked goods, and chunks of yellow cheese. Once the trucks were gone, they went through their brown grocery bags and traded their foods for the things their families liked best.”

The final section of the book focuses on the relationships between refugees and their children. This passage demonstrates the resiliency of immigrant children, who share and exchange food in order to support their families, providing perspective on The Unique Challenges of War and Displacement for Women and Children.

“For Saymoukda’s parents, lifelong Buddhists, this meant that the baby would enter into the world on the fallen leaves of gold and land gently into the hold of those who love him.”

In this scene, Saymoukda’s parents pray in a Buddhist temple in Laos while on the phone with their daughter, a powerful image of the international connections maintained by refugee communities. In a moving twist, Saymoukda’s mother, like the new baby, is also received into loving hospice care in the fall. The paralleling Yang evokes reinforces the emphasis of this section on intergenerational relationships in immigrant families.

“When Interstate 94 was built, whole neighborhoods were demolished. The corridor was full of abandoned buildings that had once serviced those who could pay for their goods.”

This passage points to the collateral damage inherent to modernization and infrastructure projects. The building of Interstate 94 required the destruction of working-class neighborhoods, which had a negative effect on nearby business districts. Ironically, working-class immigrant communities are responsible for the revitalization of the district.

“A Hmong dentist bought an old car dealership and set up his office in there, then rented part of it to a Hmong restaurateur who wanted to open up a Thai restaurant. There was still room, so he rented out the remaining space to a Hmong chiropractor who wanted to have his own practice.”

This passage speaks to the collection’s thematic interest in The Importance of Community in Times of War or Displacement. Here, the close-knit Hmong community in Minneapolis-St. Paul offers material support in business ventures that help bring families out of poverty.

“It would have been easier for everyone, including myself, if I had been born in Cambodia and had lived through Pol Pot and was made this way through the war. But I was born after the war in a new country in a life that was supposed to be easier for everyone, only I wasn’t easy.”

For many refugee families, the United States represents a welcome escape from pain and suffering. Tommy feels as if his disability is a reminder for his family of the suffering they left behind in Cambodia. As a result, he feels isolated from his family, as though he’s living out the experience of a refugee in the country of his birth.

“Mitch, a dear friend, interpreted the scripture your grandmother read from English into Hmong, the language that I want to leave you as a gift but which you are not keen on receiving, at least not yet.”

The final chapter of the collection is narrated by the author to her children. This passage highlights one of the specific Challenges of War and Displacement for Women and Children—the difficulties of maintaining ancestral ties in America, represented in this passage by Yang’s mother’s Hmong language.