Recommended Reading
Global Health Pathway Recommended Reading List
Articles: *see "Projects & Publications" of Global Health Pathway participants.
Global Health Pathway Core Text Book
Patricia F. Walker & Elizabeth Barnett (Editors). Immigrant Medicine. Elsevier October 2007. http://www.us.elsevierhealth.com/product.jsp?isbn=9780323034548
Description:
IMMIGRANT MEDICINE is the first single-volume, comprehensive guide to caring for immigrant patient populations. Edited by two of the best known contributors to the growing canon of information about immigrant medicine and written by a geographically-diverse collection of experts, this book synthesizes the most practical and clinically-relevant information and presents it in an easy-to-access format. An invaluable reference for front-line clinicians and other healthcare professionals, public health officials and policy makers, Immigrant Medicine is destined to become the benchmark reference in this emerging field.
Metropolitan Books
TROPICAL & TRAVEL MEDICINE BOOKS
- Cook, Gordon C.; Zumla, Alimuddin I. Manson’s Tropical Diseases. Saunders Ltd.; 21st edition: November 2002. 1847 pgs.
- Eddleston, Michael; Pierini, Stephen. Oxford Handbook of Tropical Medicine. Oxford University Press: 1999.
- Eddleston, Michael; Davidson, Robert; Wilkinson, Robert; Pierini, Stephen. Oxford Handbook of Tropical Medicine. Oxford University Press, USA; 2nd edition: December 16, 2004. 712 pgs.
- Harries, J.R.; Harries, A.D.; Cook, G.C. Clinical Problems in Tropical Medicine. W.B. Saunders: 1998.
- Jong, Elaine C.; McMullen, Russell. Travel and Tropical Medicine Manual. W.B. Saunders Company; 2nd edition: January 15, 1995. 532 pgs.
- Kemp, Charles; Rasbridge, Lance A. Refugee and Immigrant Health: A Handbook for Health Professionals. Cambridge University Press: September 16, 2004. 394 pgs.
- Kozarsky, Phyllis ; Arquin, Paul ; Navin, Ava. Health Information for International Travel 2005-2006. CDC; Elsevier Publishing Company: May 13, 2005. 560 pgs.
- Mahmoud, Adel. Tropical and Geographical Medicine. McGraw-Hill Inc.: 1993
- Mandel, Gerald L.; Bennett, John E.; Dolin, Raphael. Mandell, Douglas, and Bennett's Principles & Practice of Infectious Diseases. Churchill Livingstone; 5th edition: June 15, 2000. 3263 pgs.
- Olness MD, Karen; Mandalakas MD, MS, Anna; Torjese MD, MPH, Kristine. How to Help the Children in Humanitarian Disasters. Health Frontiers: 2005
- Paluska MD, Scott A. Clinics in Family Practice. Elsevier Saunders: Volume 6, Number 1; March 2004
- Peters MD, Walace. Atlas of Tropical Medicine and Parasitology, 6th Edition. 448 Pages. 1210 Illustrations Mosby. November 2006.
- Ravdin, Jonathan I. Amebiasis. Imperial College Press: 2000
- Stauffer MD, MSPH, DTM&H, William M. Clinics in Family Practice. Elsevier Saunders: Volume 7, Number 4; December 2005
- Strickland, G. Thomas. Hunter’s Tropical Medicine. W.B. Saunders Company; 7th edition: May 1991. 1153 pgs.
- Walker PF, Jaranson J. Refugee and Immigrant Health Care. Medical Clinics of North America, 1999; 83:1103-1120
CROSS-CULTURAL HEALTH BOOKS
Description:
When the American Refugee Committee of Minneapolis sent a small medical team to tend the sick and starving refugees on the war-torn Thai-Cambodian border in 1979, the fledging nonprofit had no idea its work would last into the twenty-first century. Neither did many of ARC’s volunteer nurses and physicians, who realized when they returned to Minnesota that they and western medicine needed to change if non-English-speaking refugees had any hope of better health care upon their arrival in America.
One of those volunteer physicians, Dr. Neal Holtan, founded St. Paul’s Center for International Health in 1980. His goal: to serve the unique medical needs of Minnesota’s newest immigrants, who were arriving by the thousands not only from Southeast Asia but later from Russia, Somalia, and other countries in upheaval. Little by little, the center’s staff learned that knowledge of their patients’ diseases, sensitivity to their beliefs, and integration of their customs are essential ingredients in treating persons of various cultures. A quarter of a century later, the Center for International Health is renowned for its practice of culturally competent care, thanks in large part to its director, Dr. Patricia Walker, herself a world leader in the global response to the health needs of uprooted and displaced persons.
- Braile, Louis. We Shared The Peeled Orange.
Description: Copies of the book can be purchased online from Itasca Books.
A portion of the proceeds will be donated to American Refugee Committee.
Dr. Louis Braile, who came to be known as "Papa Louis," was a volunteer physician, mentor, and teacher among Khmer refugees on the Thai-Cambodian border from 1981-1993. At the age of 59 he began his first of a dozen voluntary missions for the Minneapolis-based American Refugee Committee. He saved many lives and trained many Khmer medics, some who still work in healthcare in Cambodia today. Dr. Braile died in 2002.
The chapters of this book describe the challenges and joys, the beauty and the pain, of each of Dr. Braile's tours of duty. From his heartfelt words, the reader will gain insight into the sometimes overwhelming experience of volunteering on the front lines of a humanitarian emergency.
"Anyone who has an interest in international relief work will find the book to be a moving, personal account of the struggle to save lives against so many odds," says Hugh Parmer, President of the American Refugee Committee.
- Alexie, Sherman. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.
In this collection of 22 linked stories told from the viewpoint of several different speakers, Alexie examines what happens when a people’s collective will to survive encounters the destructive power of the feeling of resignation. The stories explore the distance between people, between: Indians and whites, reservation Indians and urban Indians, men and women, and, between modern Indians and the traditional figures from their past. Painful subject matter not withstanding, Alexie’s passion and affection for his people make these stories a very satisfying reading experience. One of the stories from this collection was made into the 1998 Mirimax film Smoke Signals .
- Boyle, T. Coraghessan. The Tortilla Curtain
The author of East Is East replays the tragic-comic meeting of representatives from two different cultures with nothing in common. This book calmly grabs hold with an unexpected suspense.
- Butler, Robert Olen. A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain: Stories
In this collection of five short stories, Butler presents the voices of fictional Vietnamese characters that have all immigrated to the United States after the Vietnam War and are now living in suburban Louisiana. Although the stories are all unrelated, they are bound together by the tension between the memories and traditions of their homeland and the stark reality of American culture. The collection won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize and American Library Association Notable Book Award.
- Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street
Told in a series of vignettes stunning for their eloquence, The House on Mango Street is Sandra Cisneros's greatly admired novel of a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Acclaimed by critics, beloved by children, their parents and grandparents, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, it has entered the canon of coming-of-age classics.
- Culhane-Pera, K.A. Healing by Heart.
Healing by Heart raises fundamental questions, such as how can health care professionals diagnose or treat a patient from a group whose beliefs, explanatory models, and communication patterns are radically different from their own? For example, how does one approach a patient who thinks that a spirit, rather than some form of physical illness, has harmed her or her child and who believes that the physical world and the spiritual world coexist? Western medicine is ill equipped to deal with such physical-spiritual dualities, and, with incomparable cosmological systems, conflicts seems to inevitably arise. Other key questions raised and answered include what it means to be culturally responsive and how to deliver culturally responsive health care. How much can one expect a Western health care professional to accommodate Hmong beliefs and practices? Conversely, how much can one expect the Hmong to accommodate Western health beliefs and practices? Whose account is authoritative, to be given primacy in the health care arena? How to train culturally sensitive, competent, responsive health care practitioners. (2003). Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt Press.
- D’Haem, Jeanne. The Last Camel: True Stories of Somalia
A written collection of stories of the people living in the village of Arabsiyo, Somalia in the late 60s that were experienced by this young Peace Corps volunteer while she lived and savored her life with them in Africa.
- Dirie, Waris; Miller, Cathleen. Desert Flower: The Extraordinary Journey of a Desert Nomad.
Waris Dirie leads a double life -- by day, she is an international supermodel and human rights ambassador for the United Nations; by night, she dreams of the simplicity of life in her native Somalia and the family she was forced to leave behind. Desert Flower, her intimate and inspiring memoir, is a must-read for anyone who has ever wondered about the beauty of African life, the chaotic existence of a supermodel, or the joys of new motherhood.Harper Perennial: October 6, 1999 .
Once in a rare while a novel comes along that succeeds in taking us away from home in order to show us what it means to be an American. The saviors of this brilliantly witty and wise novel set in a Vietnamese refugee camp off the coast of Malaysia are, among others, a pair of contrasting Americans: the outsized, outrageous, and highly opinionated Reuben Gill and the thoughtful if slightly befuddled Bobbi Porkpie Sortini. In this place that has the earmarks of a feudal kingdom, Reuben and Porkpie find themselves formenting a rebellion with results that are, to say the least, unpredictable.
Paul Eggers writes with a lyricism rooted in the mud and smoke of camp life, an authenticity that can come only from personal acquaintance with such a life, and a sense of humor that can come only from surviving it. Saviors combines the clash of cultures, the lure of the exotic, and the brutal reality of a refugee's life into a memorable human comedy.
- Fadiman, A. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down.
On October 24, 1982, three-month-old Lia Lee was carried into the emergency room of the county hospital in Merced, California. Lia's parents, Hmong refugees from the hill country of Laos, spoke no English; the hospital staff spoke no Hmong. On a later visit, Lia's doctors would determine that she was suffering from a severe case of epilepsy, a misfiring of the brain's neurons. Her parents, however, believed that her seizures were caused by the flight of her soul from her body and called her condition by its Hmong name: qaug dab peg ("the spirit catches you and you fall down"). This essential misunderstanding, leading to and surrounded by a host of smaller confusions, ultimately resulted in tragedy for Lia. In her stunning work of cross-cultural reportage, Anne Fadiman presents Lia's story from both perspectives. We learn how devotedly Lia's parents, Nao Kao Lee and Foua Yang, cared for their daughter, carrying her everywhere, arranging animal sacrifices for her, and making traditional remedies from herbs grown in the parking lot behind their apartment building. We also see the case through the eyes of Lia's doctors, the husband-and-wife team of Neil Ernst and Peggy Philp, who went to great efforts to fine-tune Lia's treatment and spent many sleepless nights pondering how to give her the best care possible. (1997). New York, NY: Farvan, Straus & Giroux
- Gehrke-White, Donna. The Face Behind the Veil: The Extraordinary Lives of Muslim Women in America
In this extraordinary and moving book, journalist Gehrke-White provides a rare, revealing look into the hearts, minds, and everyday lives of Muslim women in America, and opens a window on a culture as diverse as it is misunderstood.
- Gillan, Maria Mazziotti. Growing Up Ethnic in America: Contemporary Fiction About Learning to Be American
The editors who brought us Unsettling America and Identity Lessons have compiled a short- story anthology that focuses on themes of racial and ethnic assimilation. With humor, passion, and grace, the contributors lay bare poignant attempts at conformity and the alienation sometimes experienced by ethnic Americans. But they also tell of the strength gained through the preservation of their communities, and the realization that it was often their difference from the norm that helped them to succeed. In pieces suggesting that American identity is far from settled, these writers illustrate the diversity that is the source of both the nation's great discord and infinite promise.
- Gillan, Maria M. Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry
Aptly titled, this substantial anthology provides exposure to poets, emerging and established-Louis Simpson, Rita Dove, Luis Rodriguez-who write directly from the immigrant, ethnic and/or religious experience. The collection gives evidence of inequality and discrimination, and offers eyewitness accounts of the gross inconsistencies and bigotry of America. The poems tap into visceral energies, either born of or becoming a vitalizing anger; they bristle with a recognition of failed expectations. Thoughtful and attentive, the mother/daughter editorial team of the Gillans divides the book into sections concerned with "uprooting," "performing," "naming," "negotiating" and, finally and hopefully, "re-envisioning." The most moving poems concern a loss of home and custom, and the compromises struck in order to make life tolerable in a quietly (and not so quietly) intolerant society. Also distressing is work describing the intense desire of some poets to assimilate-efforts later remembered as humiliating. This collection is a must for anyone seeking an inclusive, unwincing catalogue of the American experience. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Gillan, Maria M. Identity Lessons: Contemporary Writing About Learning to Be American
In stories and poems that explore how our society shapes us, Identity Lessons features a wide array of ethnic perspectives on growing up in America. Leading the reader into the living-rooms, boardrooms, classrooms, and movie houses of America, distinguished writers from all points of the American ethnic landscape shed light on the space between conformity and difference, and examine the struggle between the need to belong and the pull of one's cultural roots. With insight, wit, and poignancy, the contributors to this anthology recall their attempts to reconcile family from the old country with the powerful messages about race, gender and class confronting them in their new surroundings. A collection of superb and moving writing, Identity Lessons deconstructs conceptions of personal and national identity, and forms an indispensable primer for understanding our cultural selves.
- Girls of Many Lands Book Series
This series of historical non-fiction books captures the experiences of 12 year old girls growing up in different settings and time periods around the world. Written for young readers, they are enjoyable to read even as an adult as they explore the different family and community pressures as well as cultures that a young girl would have faced in each of the different settings. So far the series includes stories of girls from Istanbul, Alaska, France, England, India, Ethiopia, China and Ireland.
- Gourevitch, Philip. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda
The Rwandan genocide, its roots and its tangled aftermath are the subjects of Philip Gourevitch’s superb and haunting book. His compassionate and level-headed portrait captures the immense sadness and emptiness of a country that lost a tenth of its population in a single spasm of political violence, as well as the pervasive dread that Rwanda will likely experience such bloodshed again.
- Hemon, Aleksandar. Nowhere Man
Aleksandar Hemon lovingly crafts Pronek into a character who is sure to become an enduring literary icon. From the grand causes of his adolescence – principally, fighting to change the face of rock and roll and, hilariously, struggling to lose his virginity – up through a fleeting encounter with George Bush (the first) in Kiev, to enrollment in a Chicago ESL class and the glorious adventures of minimum-wage living, Pronek’s experiences are at once touchingly familiar and bracingly out-of-the-ordinary.
- Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner
The story of a young Afghani boy in the 1960s as he “faces the challenges that confront him on the path to manhood—testing friendships, finding love, cheating death, accepting faults, and gaining understanding.”
- Ilibagiza, Immacul?e. Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
Immaculee shares her miraculous story of how she survived during the Rwanda genocide in 1994 when she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor’s house for 91 days! In this captivating and inspiring book, Immaculee shows us how to embrace the power of prayer, forge a profound and lasting relationship with God, and discover the importance of forgiveness and the meaning of truly unconditional love and understanding—through our darkest hours.
- Kapuscinski, Ryzard. The Shadow of the Sun
This book has been described as an exploration of and introduction to postcolonial Africa, written by a Polish Journalist who creatively and intelligently writes about his observances of African daily life.
- Kidder, Tracy. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World.
Mountains Beyond Mountains takes us from Harvard to Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russia as Farmer changes minds and practices through his dedication to the philosophy that "the only real nation is humanity" - a philosophy that is embodied in the small public charity he founded, Partners In Health. He enlists the help of the Gates Foundation, George Soros, the U.N.’s World Health Organization, and others in his quest to cure the world. At the heart of this book is the example of a life based on hope, and on an understanding of the truth of the Haitian proverb “Beyond mountains there are mountains”: as you solve one problem, another problem presents itself, and so you go on and try to solve that one too.
- Kurtz, Jane. Children’s Books.
Jane Kurtz grew up in Ethiopia and has written a number of children’s books that take place in Ethiopia and other settings around the globe. Her books are well illustrated and creatively written, conveying lessons about life that we all should learn as we grow up.
- Lee, G. Y. Dust of Life: A True Ban Vinai Love Story
It was 1977 and Ban Vinai had just been set up as a refugee camp for thousands of Hmong who fled the new communist regime in Laos to the safety of Thailand, Mua, a young, Hmong man, had just recently completed his university studies and was living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was asked by Pafua, a refugee girl in Ban Vinai, to help sponsor her and her family for settlement in the United States. Although he hardly knew her, he travelled to Thailand to see what he could do. It was agreed that if they got on well, he would marry her and apply for her and her family to come and live with him in America. In the meantime, he went to work on a Thai government project with Hmong opium growers in Chiangmai where he met a young, Thai woman named Phorn. She was the opposite to the Hmong girl in many ways and he became inadvertently involved with her. After a few months of visits and courtship, he asked Pafua for marriage. To his dismay, her mother refused him her hand. Hurt and disappointed, he turned to Phorn but would soon learn that she was very different from what he understood her to be. Shattered by these events, he returned to the US where he continued to work for Hmong refugees. It was not until many years later when Mua went to Australia, where Pafua and her mother had gone to live, that he discovered the awful truth about her refusal to marry him - a discovery that would profoundly affect him for the rest of his life. This novel is both a mystery and a love story. It is about the Hmong as much as the Thai people and their cultures. The author, who is an anthropologist, has woven many facts into the book that will help the reader appreciate different facets of life among the poor in Thailand, the recent history of the Hmong refugees from Laos, their difficult life in the refugee camp of Ban Vinai and their rich traditions.
- Levine, Ruth; Kinder, Molly. Millions Saved: Proven Successes in Global Health.
One of the greatest human accomplishments has been the spectacular improvement in health since 1950. In developing countries, life expectancy has risen from 40 to 65 years, and the chances that a child will survive to the age of five has doubled. In addition to directly improving people's lives, this progress contributes to economic growth. While some of the improvements in health is the result of overall social and economic gains, about half of it is due to specific efforts to address major causes of disease and disability -- such as providing better and more accessible health services, introducing new medicines and other health technologies, and fostering healthier behaviors. Millions Saved: Proven Success in Global Health is about part of that success story: remarkable cases in which large-scale efforts to improve health in developing countries have succeeded - saving millions of lives and preserving the livelihoods and social fabric of entire communities. Center for Global Development: November 30, 2004.
- Lim, Shirley; Chua, Cheng Lok; Lim, Shirley Geok-Lin. Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing
This anthology of American writers originally from Southeast Asia (Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaya, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam) includes poems and short stories by 41 "emerging" writers in English. The anthology has been divided into themes such as "Family," "Eating," "The Different Past," and "Returnings." Some of the writers are already well known (editor Lim, Marianne Villanueva), and the others, with one or two exceptions, have already been published. All the writers deal with making a life in the United States while recognizing their differences, adjustments, and traumas. Particularly poignant are poems and stories by Anh Quynh Bui, Aurora Harris, Hanh Hoang, Joseph O. Legaspi, Lim, Ira Sukrungruang, and Villanueva; but all the works are well written and thoughtful. The editors, both professors of literature at California universities, have chosen well. Recommended for public and academic libraries. Kitty Chen Dean, Nassau Community Coll., Garden City, NY Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Miles, Steven. Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror.
Vulnerable in body and mind, we look to our physicians for compassion -- which makes torture that's abetted by the medical profession especially horrific. Jacobo Timerman, a victim of Argentina's "dirty war," wrote of the special pain of seeing a doctor present in the interrogation room, of the sense of abandonment that lay in knowing that a person of science "is with you when you are tortured by the beasts."
But the link between healing and torture is hard to sever. In August 2004, Steven H. Miles, a bioethicist and professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota, reported in the British medical journal the Lancet that the United States had, in effect, returned to the era of the torture doctor. In Iraq and Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Miles wrote, "The medical system collaborated with designing and implementing psychologically and physically coercive interrogations." Miles's charges were detailed: Death certificates had been falsified, he wrote, and military health personnel had reported incidences of torture belatedly, if at all.
- Mortenson, Greg; Relin, David Oliver. Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations…One School at a Time.
In 1993 Greg Mortenson was the exhausted survivor of a failed attempt to ascend K2, an American climbing bum wandering emaciated and lost through Pakistan’s Karakoram Himalaya. After he was taken in and nursed back to health by the people of an impoverished Pakistani village, Mortenson promised to return one day and build them a school. From that rash, earnest promise grew one of the most incredible humanitarian campaigns of our time—Greg Mortenson’s one-man mission to counteract extremism by building schools, especially for girls, throughout the breeding ground of the Taliban.
- Moua, Houa Vue; Rolland, Barbara J. Trails Through the Mists.
This is a biography of a Hmong woman, Houa Vue, and her life in Laos during the Secret War and her refugee experience in the United States. Houa Vue Moua, the author, is a well known public speaker in the Hmong community.
- Moua, Mai Neng. Bamboo Among the Oaks: Contemporary Writing by Hmong Americans
In this groundbreaking anthology, first- and second-generation Hmong Americans--the first to write creatively in English--share their perspectives on being Hmong in America. In stories, poetry, essays, and drama, these writers address the common challenges of immigrants adapting to a new homeland: preserving ethnic identity and traditions, assimilating to and battling with the dominant culture, negotiating generational conflicts exacerbated by the clash of cultures, and developing new identities in multiracial America. Many pieces examine Hmong history and culture and the authors' experiences as Americans.
- Nazario, Sonia. Enrique’s Journey.
In this astonishing true story, award-winning journalist Sonia Nazario recounts the unforgettable odyssey of a Honduran boy who braves unimaginable hardship and peril to reach his mother in the United States.Random House: February 21, 2006.
- Osborn, Garth; Ohmans, Patricia. Finding Work in Global Health.
This book is a practical guide for job-seekers or anyone who wants to make the world a healthier place. The new 2005 edition written by Garth Osborn and Patrician Ohmans includes a preface by Nils Daulaire, MD, MPH, President and CEO of the Global Health Council. Health Advocates Press: 2005.
- Peterson, Scott. Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda
As a foreign correspondent, Scott Peterson witnessed firsthand Somalia’s descent into war and its battle against U.S. troops, the spiritual degeneration of Sudan’s Holy War, and one of the most horrific events of the last half of the century: the genocide in Rwanda. In Me Against My Brother, Peterson brings these events together for the first time to record a collapse that has had an impact far beyond African borders.
- Phan, Aimee. We Should Never Meet: Stories
Compelling, moving, and beautifully written, the interlinked stories that make up We Should Never Meet alternate between Saigon before the city's fall in 1975 and present-day "Little Saigon" in Southern California---exploring the reverberations of the Vietnam War in a completely new light.
Intersecting the lives of eight characters across three decades and two continents, these stories dramatize the events of Operation Babylift, the U.S.-led evacuation of thousands of Vietnamese orphans to America just weeks before the fall of Saigon. Unwitting reminders of the war, these children were considered bui doi, the dust of life, and faced an uncertain, dangerous existence if left behind in Vietnam.
Four of the stories follow the saga of one orphan's journey from the points-of-view of a teenage mother, a duck farmer and a Catholic nun from the Mekong Delta, a social worker in Saigon, and a volunteer doctor from America. The other four take place twenty years later and chronicle the lives of four Vietnamese orphans now living in America: Kim, an embittered Amerasian searching for her unknown mother; Vinh, her gang member ex-boyfriend who preys on Vietnamese families; Mai, an ambitious orphan who faces her emancipation from the American foster-care system; and Huan, an Amerasian adopted by a white family, who returns to Vietnam with his adoptive mother.
- Pipher, Mary. The Middle of Everywhere: Helping Refugees Enter the American Community .
Over the past decade, Mary Pipher has been a great source of wisdom, helping us to better understand our family members. Now she connects us with the newest members of the American family--refugees. In cities all over the country, refugees arrive daily. Lost Boys from Sudan, survivors from Kosovo, families fleeing Afghanistan and Vietnam: they come with nothing but the desire to experience the American dream. Their endurance in the face of tragedy and their ability to hold on to the virtues of family, love, and joy are a lesson for Americans. Their stories will make you laugh and weep--and give you a deeper understanding of the wider world in which we live.
The Middle of Everywhere moves beyond the headlines into the homes of refugees from around the world. Working as a cultural broker, teacher, and therapist, Mary Pipher has once again opened our eyes--and our hearts--to those with whom we share the future. Harvest Books; Reprint edition: July 1, 2003.
- Rinpoche, C.N. & Shlim, D.R. Medicine & Compassion; A Tibetan Lama’s Guidance for Caregivers.
Medicine and Compassionrepresents a Tibetan lama’s compassionate advice to harried caregivers. If you ever dreamed of being more compassionate more of the time, with less effort, you should read this book. (2004). Sommerville, MA: Wisdom Publisher.
- Saykoa, Dr. Pao. The Root and The Fruit: Hmong Identity.
The Root and The Fruit is on of the very first books to address Hmong identity, especially written by a Hmong. This book is a revision of Dr. Pao Saykao’s keynote presentation at the 2002 Hmong National Development Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
- Strom, Dao. Grass Roof, Tin Roof
In this stunning novel about a Vietnamese family resettling in the isolation of California gold country, Dao Strom investigates the myth of westward progress and the consequences of cultural displacement.
Told from multiple perspectives and interwoven with the intimate reflections of a middle child, Grass Roof, Tin Roof begins with the story of Tran, a Vietnamese writer facing government persecution, who flees her homeland during the exodus of 1975 and brings her two children to the West. Here she marries a Danish American man who has survived a different war. He promises understanding and guidance, but the psychic consequences of his past soon hinder his relationships with the family. The children, for whom the war is now a distant shadow, struggle to understand the world around them on their own terms.
In delicate, innovative prose, Strom's characters experience the collision of cultures and the spiritual aftermath of war on the most visceral level. Grass Roof, Tin Roof is a beautiful work of profundity and empathy, powerful emotion and rare insight.
- Tsukiyama, Gail. The Samurai’s Garden.
Shortly before World War II, a Chinese man, sent to Japan to recover from tuberculosis, meets a desirable Japanese girl and begins a love story which brims over with undying love, devotion, and passion. Gail Tsukiyama uses her poetic narrative style to compose the lovely story in The Samurai’s Garden, a look at the coming together of two distinctively different cultures and how these differences cause a great deal of turmoil to two who are joined by the heart in a love for the ages.
- Ung, Loung. First They Killed My Father
A memoir of Loung Ung’s experience during the Cambodian Genocide. It’s a very emotional book detailing the memories of a little girl during this horrific time in Cambodia.
The sequel to Ung’s first book, paralleling her life in America with her sister’s life in Cambodia as the grow up into adulthood. The book gives a unique perspective into the struggles of assimilation, dealing with the haunting memories of death, violence, and genocide as well as providing a look inside the lives of those who were left behind in Cambodia
- Yan, Yorn. New Americans, New Promise: A Guide to the Refugee Journey in America.
Refugees are resilient, brave people who come to America with the hope of creating a better life. In New Americans, New Promise, author Yorn Yan describes the refugee experience in the United States and how to best help refugees through the acculturation and transition process of becoming a New American. Fieldstone Alliance (2006). St. Paul, MN.
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