Refugee Dreams

"I saw many killed. I almost starved. But I escaped to refugee camps in Thailand and eventually made it to the U.S." Thus begins Leth Oun's poignant and vivid memoir. A survivor of the Cambodian Killing Fields—having spent a torturous three years, eight months, and ten days imprisoned by the Khmer Rouge—Oun thrived in America, learning English, becoming a citizen, and working as an officer in the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division. In A Refugee's American Dream, Oun shares hard memories of Cambodia, where his father was executed, and his family enslaved in labor camps.

For this striking, stripped-down account of youth immigration, Villalobos interviewed teens at various stages of the immigration process to illustrate their stories - the physical and emotional difficulties of their travels. He then changed certain elements of these stories in order to protect the children's identities. Each chapter brings forth the voice of one young immigrant's experience, from crossing the Mexican desert to gang violence to the freezers at ICE detention centers.

In February 1962, three years into Fidel Castro’s rule of their Cuban homeland, the González family - an auto mechanic, his wife, and two young children - landed in Miami with a few personal possessions and two bottles of Cuban rum. As his parents struggled to find work, 11-year-old Gerardo struggled to fit in at school, where a teacher intimidated him and school authorities placed him on a vocational track. Inspired by a close friend, Gerardo decided to go to college. He not only graduated but placed himself on a path through higher education that brought him to a deanship at the Indiana University School of Education.

Two refugees find that their lives are inextricably linked—over time and distance—by the perils of history and a single haunting piece of music in this “breathtaking and simultaneously heartbreaking” (The Montecito Journal) story. Born in Beirut in 1922, Marguerite Toutounghi lives a...