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sunshine169's review against another edition
4.0
I believe that this is such an important book to read, especially in today's crisis of humanity. Agus Morales talks with the people who lives have been interrupted by war, drug violence, and collapsed economies. The major consensus among the displaced population is they just want to go back to their homes but they cannot. People risk their lives trying to better. Those who are traveling from Central America through Mexico to get to the United States risk run-ins with criminals, rapists, traffickers and other threats. People fleeing through the Mediterranean risk drowning or being attacked on the open sea. Syrians head for Turkey to avoid being bombed or shot. However, bullets in these places are not the only things causing death. Hospitals are being targeted by bombs and ransacked. Doctors are murdered. People cannot get medical care they need. Basic human rights are being neglected or stripped away. Babies are being born on boats or as I come to call it, the land of the in-between.
I will warn you this book was hard to read. Reading the experiences from the mouths of the displaced was heartbreaking. We need to ask ourselves... what would we do if we were in there position? How far would you go for your friends, family, and children in trouble? We need to look at the origins on why people are on the move and figure out how it can be rectified.
I also learned something else reading this book. Just because they are displaced does not mean they were poor. There was an interview with a man who owned a factory in Syria that made him 1500 a day. It was destroyed during the fighting. Him and his family are currently on there way to Oslo but would rather go back to Syria to rebuild their lives. So when you see a refugee with a cell phone don't assume they don't still need help. That is a ridiculous assumption and one I will strive to keep in mind for the future.
Thank you Netgalley for providing me with early access to this book in return for an honest review.
I will warn you this book was hard to read. Reading the experiences from the mouths of the displaced was heartbreaking. We need to ask ourselves... what would we do if we were in there position? How far would you go for your friends, family, and children in trouble? We need to look at the origins on why people are on the move and figure out how it can be rectified.
I also learned something else reading this book. Just because they are displaced does not mean they were poor. There was an interview with a man who owned a factory in Syria that made him 1500 a day. It was destroyed during the fighting. Him and his family are currently on there way to Oslo but would rather go back to Syria to rebuild their lives. So when you see a refugee with a cell phone don't assume they don't still need help. That is a ridiculous assumption and one I will strive to keep in mind for the future.
Thank you Netgalley for providing me with early access to this book in return for an honest review.
readsewknit's review against another edition
3.0
Over 65 million individuals worldwide are displaced because of war. However, when it doesn't directly impact us, when we have comfortable homes and uncomplicated lives, we can be calloused and untouched by the reality of those who have lost everything.
Agus Morales, a journalist who has spent time with Doctors Without Borders, traveled to various countries to learn individual accounts of those who are displaced and compiled them into We Are Not Refugees: True Stories of the Displaced.
Repeatedly we read of men, women, and children who have faced countless dangers. While I think accounts like these are important to read, I found the book disjointed and uneven. Perhaps it's due to having been translated, perhaps it's due to organization, but I imagine it could have flowed better if structured differently. Looking at the table of contents, it seems that it should be solid: we begin with why they are forced out of their homes, then who these individuals are. Then the author continues to delve into their current living conditions and their travels, ending with their destinations. However, enough overlap exists in these stories that I found it repetitive. All the same, this can be an introduction to a timely crisis.
(I received a digital ARC from Charlesbridge via NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.)
Agus Morales, a journalist who has spent time with Doctors Without Borders, traveled to various countries to learn individual accounts of those who are displaced and compiled them into We Are Not Refugees: True Stories of the Displaced.
Repeatedly we read of men, women, and children who have faced countless dangers. While I think accounts like these are important to read, I found the book disjointed and uneven. Perhaps it's due to having been translated, perhaps it's due to organization, but I imagine it could have flowed better if structured differently. Looking at the table of contents, it seems that it should be solid: we begin with why they are forced out of their homes, then who these individuals are. Then the author continues to delve into their current living conditions and their travels, ending with their destinations. However, enough overlap exists in these stories that I found it repetitive. All the same, this can be an introduction to a timely crisis.
(I received a digital ARC from Charlesbridge via NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.)
cwirka11's review against another edition
DNF
Bardzo interesowała mnie ta tematyka, ale jest zbyt chaotycznie by przez to przebrnąć.
Bardzo interesowała mnie ta tematyka, ale jest zbyt chaotycznie by przez to przebrnąć.
pnz19's review against another edition
5.0
Cercavo da tempo un libro così. Ne parlo sul blog: https://paperlifeblog.com/2019/01/12/non-siamo-rifugiati-agus-morales/
toria's review
5.0
We Are not Refugees
Agus Morales
This book was given to me by the publisher, via Netgalley, in the hope of an honest review. It is now available from all good bookshops.
This book, set against a background of growing intolerance against immigrants and asylum seekers, gives the stories of refugees. It explores; the trends that lead the refugees to leave their homes, their journeys to 'safety,' and the welcome which they receive from their new country.
We are Not Refugees explores the language that these individuals use, to tell their tale, recounting the stories of individual refugees. Agus Morales places these tales within a wider immigrant narrative, outlining the histories of many of the world's trouble spots.
This book manages to be, at the same time; both, incredibly compelling and informative. I highly recommend this work.
Agus Morales
This book was given to me by the publisher, via Netgalley, in the hope of an honest review. It is now available from all good bookshops.
This book, set against a background of growing intolerance against immigrants and asylum seekers, gives the stories of refugees. It explores; the trends that lead the refugees to leave their homes, their journeys to 'safety,' and the welcome which they receive from their new country.
We are Not Refugees explores the language that these individuals use, to tell their tale, recounting the stories of individual refugees. Agus Morales places these tales within a wider immigrant narrative, outlining the histories of many of the world's trouble spots.
This book manages to be, at the same time; both, incredibly compelling and informative. I highly recommend this work.
tonstantweader's review
4.0
Agus Morales is a Spanish poet and journalist who has spent the last several years covering wars and refugees in SE Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. We Are Not Refugees is his effort to capture the vastness of the crisis while taking it from the large abstractions of numbers to the particular experiences of people. There are about 68 million people who have been forced to leave their homes for many reasons, most often war and persecution.
We Are Not Refugees is organized into five sections that address the common questions most of us have about refugees with the stories of real people. He asks why they are fleeing, who are they, where do they live, how do they travel, and when do they arrive. His answers come from interviewing some two hundred people in fourteen countries.
Much of the story of displacement is told through the voices of the people he meets and interviews. This takes the narrative of this crisis away from the big numbers of faceless “refugees” to the individual exigencies of people, men, women, and children with whom we can and must identify.
Morales brings the magic of a poet to his writing in We Are Not Refugees. Using his art, he focuses on the essential point of his stories, the humanity of the people he interviews. As a poet, he understands the power of language and illustrates how it is used to separate us from each other. He points out that refugees seldom refer to themselves as refugees. He notes that people like to add modifiers like economic to qualify and disqualify refugees. He writes about how important the words are, though. For example, if you flee violence but stay in your own country, you’re an internally displaced person and have no international protection from the United Nations. Refugee is another important word because it offers protection while migrants have none. As a poet, he not only notes the legal power of these words but how effectively they are used to distance us from what is true of all, they are people.
If we can always remember to think of people who have been forced from their homes, whether they are legally called displaced persons, migrants, or refugees, as people first, as fellow humans, we will do a better job of demanding our national and international governments do a better job of treating them with dignity and humanity.
We Are Not Refugees is fascinating, inspiring, and heartbreaking. It is particularly shaming for an American when our selfish and xenophobic response has been so feeble while smaller, poorer countries do so much more. Calling ourselves a nation of immigrants seems like such hypocrisy when we are doing our level best to turn the tide against immigration and abandoning our obligations to asylees and refugees.
I received a copy of We Are Not Refugees from the publisher through NetGalley.
We Are Not Refugees at Charlesbridge | Imagine | Penguin Random House
Agus Morales author site
Agus Morales stories for 5W
★★★★
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2019/05/04/9781623545321/
We Are Not Refugees is organized into five sections that address the common questions most of us have about refugees with the stories of real people. He asks why they are fleeing, who are they, where do they live, how do they travel, and when do they arrive. His answers come from interviewing some two hundred people in fourteen countries.
Much of the story of displacement is told through the voices of the people he meets and interviews. This takes the narrative of this crisis away from the big numbers of faceless “refugees” to the individual exigencies of people, men, women, and children with whom we can and must identify.
Morales brings the magic of a poet to his writing in We Are Not Refugees. Using his art, he focuses on the essential point of his stories, the humanity of the people he interviews. As a poet, he understands the power of language and illustrates how it is used to separate us from each other. He points out that refugees seldom refer to themselves as refugees. He notes that people like to add modifiers like economic to qualify and disqualify refugees. He writes about how important the words are, though. For example, if you flee violence but stay in your own country, you’re an internally displaced person and have no international protection from the United Nations. Refugee is another important word because it offers protection while migrants have none. As a poet, he not only notes the legal power of these words but how effectively they are used to distance us from what is true of all, they are people.
If we can always remember to think of people who have been forced from their homes, whether they are legally called displaced persons, migrants, or refugees, as people first, as fellow humans, we will do a better job of demanding our national and international governments do a better job of treating them with dignity and humanity.
We Are Not Refugees is fascinating, inspiring, and heartbreaking. It is particularly shaming for an American when our selfish and xenophobic response has been so feeble while smaller, poorer countries do so much more. Calling ourselves a nation of immigrants seems like such hypocrisy when we are doing our level best to turn the tide against immigration and abandoning our obligations to asylees and refugees.
I received a copy of We Are Not Refugees from the publisher through NetGalley.
We Are Not Refugees at Charlesbridge | Imagine | Penguin Random House
Agus Morales author site
Agus Morales stories for 5W
★★★★
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2019/05/04/9781623545321/
deedireads's review
3.0
All my reviews can be seen at https://deedireads.com/.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy of this book! It’s on sale March 5th.
We Are Not Refugees was an important and very interesting book to read. Agus Morales is a journalist who has spent years traveling the globe, interviewing people who’ve had to flee their homes.
What has come out of those travels are stories and stories and stories. Stories of people who do not think of themselves as “refugees,” because the world has cast “refugees” as poor, destitute, helpless beings. And many these people came from a home where they once lived comfortably, once had a livelihood, once (perhaps still) had a family.
These people are people, and all they want is a safe place where they can go back to being productive members of society.
I think the point that really stood out the most for me was about their smartphones; many people look at these people who come with Nikes, and iPhones, and other consumer goods from our world, and that doesn’t jive right. So they say, “If they’re so poor, why do they have iPhones?”
And to that Morales says: As if a map isn’t the one thing you need when you’re lost. And he says: If I had to flee my home, my belongings, and my family because of danger, the last thing I’d leave behind would be my cellphone.
And despite the valiant effort, I still found it so, so hard to tune into these stories — to keep myself from viewing them at a distance. It’s hard to look at that kind of pain and suffering and feel it consistently. So I think the only thing I can do here is to keep reading stories like these — more and more and more. Maybe then it will stick.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy of this book! It’s on sale March 5th.
We Are Not Refugees was an important and very interesting book to read. Agus Morales is a journalist who has spent years traveling the globe, interviewing people who’ve had to flee their homes.
What has come out of those travels are stories and stories and stories. Stories of people who do not think of themselves as “refugees,” because the world has cast “refugees” as poor, destitute, helpless beings. And many these people came from a home where they once lived comfortably, once had a livelihood, once (perhaps still) had a family.
These people are people, and all they want is a safe place where they can go back to being productive members of society.
I think the point that really stood out the most for me was about their smartphones; many people look at these people who come with Nikes, and iPhones, and other consumer goods from our world, and that doesn’t jive right. So they say, “If they’re so poor, why do they have iPhones?”
And to that Morales says: As if a map isn’t the one thing you need when you’re lost. And he says: If I had to flee my home, my belongings, and my family because of danger, the last thing I’d leave behind would be my cellphone.
And despite the valiant effort, I still found it so, so hard to tune into these stories — to keep myself from viewing them at a distance. It’s hard to look at that kind of pain and suffering and feel it consistently. So I think the only thing I can do here is to keep reading stories like these — more and more and more. Maybe then it will stick.
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