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Summary
Summary
"Simply brilliant, both in its granular storytelling and its enormous compassion" --The New York Times Book Review
The story of two refugee families and their hope and resilience as they fight to survive and belong in America
The welcoming and acceptance of immigrants and refugees have been central to America's identity for centuries--yet America has periodically turned its back in times of the greatest humanitarian need. After the Last Border is an intimate look at the lives of two women as they struggle for the twenty-first century American dream, having won the "golden ticket" to settle as refugees in Austin, Texas.
Mu Naw, a Christian from Myanmar struggling to put down roots with her family, was accepted after decades in a refugee camp at a time when America was at its most open to displaced families; and Hasna, a Muslim from Syria, agrees to relocate as a last resort for the safety of her family--only to be cruelly separated from her children by a sudden ban on refugees from Muslim countries. Writer and activist Jessica Goudeau tracks the human impacts of America's ever-shifting refugee policy as both women narrowly escape from their home countries and begin the arduous but lifesaving process of resettling in Austin--a city that would show them the best and worst of what America has to offer.
After the Last Border situates a dramatic, character-driven story within a larger history--the evolution of modern refugee resettlement in the United States, beginning with World War II and ending with current closed-door policies--revealing not just how America's changing attitudes toward refugees have influenced policies and laws, but also the profound effect on human lives.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Goudeau presents a richly detailed account of the resettlement experiences of two women granted refugee status in the U.S. Mu Naw fled Myanmar in 1989, at age five, and grew up in Thai refugee camps. She came to Austin, Tex., in 2007 with her husband and two young daughters, and Goudeau chronicles the family's struggles with the language barrier, loneliness, and post-traumatic stress. Hasna al-Salam's story begins in Daara, Syria, in 2011, when clashes between the Syrian Army and antigovernment protesters separated her from her adult children. Told by immigration authorities that her children could follow her through the family reunification process, Hasna made it to the U.S. in 2016. However, passage of the Trump administration's travel ban scuttled those plans. Goudeau interweaves the stories of Mu Naw and Hasna with the history of refugee legislation in America, from the 1948 Displaced Persons Act to the 1980 Federal Refugee Resettlement Program and the raising of the refugee quota by President Obama just before the 2016 election. Her excellent interview skills and obvious empathy for her subjects make the family portraits utterly engrossing, and the history sections provide essential context. This moving and insightful dual portrait makes an impassioned case for humane immigration and refugee policy. Agent: Mackenzie Brady Watson, the Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency. (Apr.)
Kirkus Review
An Austin-based journalist and immigrant activist interweaves narratives of two refugees with a history of modern American refugee resettlement policies.World War II transformed the United States into a global leader in refugee resettlement. However, as former Catapult columnist Goudeau shows in her moving debut, the American dream has since become out of reachboth within and without U.S. bordersto immigrant asylum-seekers. Drawing on extensive interviews with two refugees she helped to resettle as well as historical research, the author draws attention to a resettlement problem that has reached crisis proportions. She centers the narrative on two women: Mu Naw, a member of a persecuted minority in Myanmar, and Hasna, a refugee from the Syrian civil war. Both were granted a chance to resettle in the U.S. in the first and second decades, respectively, of the 21st century, a time when the number of refugees globally had reached all-time highs but the number of refugees offered resettlement in the U.S. had reached historic lows. Yet because Mu Naw was Christian and Hasna was Muslim, the two had distinctly different experiences. Mu Naw faced the inevitable discrimination that came with immigrant status. Nevertheless, many white Americans offered the social and financial support that allowed her and her family to leave poverty behind and become middle class within the span of a decade. Hasna, who arrived in the U.S. just a few months before the election of Donald Trump in 2016, found herself facing a far more hostile atmosphere and uncertain future. Most of the people who helped her and her family were Syrian American. When American travel bans against Muslims, including Syrian refugees, went into effect in 2017, her hopes of reuniting the members of her war-fractured family faded. In a detailed text that moves smoothly around in time, Goudeau effectively humanizes the worldwide refugee crisis while calling much-needed attention to a badly broken American immigration system.Sharp, provocative, timely reading. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
This book details how two refugee families, forced to flee from their respective homes in Myanmar and Syria, came to live in the U.S. Goudeau, a journalist who also works with refugee resettlement organizations in her hometown of Austin, based her profiles on over two years' worth of in-depth interviews. Her main sources were the matriarchs of each family: now self-sufficient, Mu Naw has established a secure home and profitable business and has become a leader among her fellow Christian refugees from Myanmar; grief-stricken Hasna, from Syria, is isolated and separated from her family due to evolving immigration policies. It's obvious that Goudeau was able to gain the two women's trust, resulting in compelling stories that offer intimate looks into their personal lives and uncover horrific details about what they've seen and experienced. Their histories emerge through alternating chapters broken up by excerpts that provide social and political background about American refugee resettlement from the nineteenth century to the present day. These profiles are sympathetic and ultimately profoundly moving.--Kathleen McBroom Copyright 2020 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Goudeau's work with a refugee resettlement agency in Texas informs her intimate portrait of two women whose families sought safety in the United States. By alternately focusing on the individual experiences of Mu Naw from Myanmar and Hasna from Syria, the author humanizes their departures from their homes, the complex and frightening refugee process they encountered, and their different experiences settling in Texas. Along with their stories, which span from roughly 2007--17, Goudeau intersperses several chapters describing a century of complex U.S. federal refugee policy that provide historical context. While Mu Naw and Hasna shared some characteristics, they starkly diverged in the situations they fled and, especially, in the timing of their entry into the U.S. Mu Naw found fewer impediments as a Christian from Myanmar, entering the U.S. in 2007 and quickly adapting to life in Texas. Escaping fierce violence in Syria in 2016, Hasna faced greater impediments than Mu Naw, including having family members impacted by Trump's travel ban affecting predominantly Muslim countries. VERDICT An excellent choice for readers seeking to understand the human effects of government immigration and refugee policy. Goudeau's sometimes heartbreaking narratives personalize the refugee crisis in ways cold news accounts cannot.--Charles K. Piehl, Minnesota State Univ., Mankato
Excerpts
Excerpts
Prologue Mu Naw Myanmar/Thailand border, 1989 Mu Naw is five and she is running. Thick wet grass rises higher than her chubby thighs and she lifts her legs as if she is marching, almost jumping to keep up with the frantic adults. Her mouth is silent, but her body makes noises because she hasn't learned yet how to run and hide well in the woods. Her mother is carrying her baby sister; her toddler brother is with her aunt. Mu Naw struggles valiantly, pushes back tall plants, breathes hard, but she cannot keep up. Her young uncle swings her up onto his shoulders and she wraps her arms under his neck, lays her cheek on his head to keep it out of the way of slapping branches, and holds on. They run for three days. On the back trails in the mountains, they encounter another family. They are wary at first, but soon realize they are prey hunted by the same predators. They run together. There is safety in numbers. They pool what knowledge they have. Someone heard there are openings at a refugee camp across the river in Thailand. They set off in that direction. At night, in the darkness, in hushed voices, they share their stories. Mu Naw overhears her young uncle whispering to another man about what happened; he had waited until his sister, Mu Naw's beautiful aunt, was off gathering firewood to speak. Mu Naw's beautiful aunt is married. She caught the eye of a soldier in the tatmadaw ; not just any soldier, a dangerous soldier with burnished stars on his green sleeve. Mu Naw remembers a man with stars on his sleeve. From her uncle's whispers, she learns those stars probably mean he was a general in the tatmadaw, the Myanmar Armed Forces. The villagers are Karen, one of the many ethnic minorities that the Burmese junta is targeting on a variety of fronts. All over the country, everyone who is Karen--or Kachin, Karenni, Rohingya, Chin, or any of the other groups of people who are not ethnically Burmese--will run. Or they will think about running. Or they will wish they had been able to run. They will pour into camps in Malaysia and India and Thailand, depending on how the vicious scythe of war cuts through their villages and cities. When the scythe sliced through Mu Naw's village, that general held it. Mu Naw understands from her uncle's tone that the stars on the general's sleeve mean her aunt could not refuse. If she told him she loved her husband, if she said politely, with her eyes down respectfully and her teeth bared in an uncomfortable smile, that she would rather not --she and all of her relatives had better run the second he turned his back. Her aunt turned him down. Now Mu Naw and her family are running. They love Mu Naw's beautiful young aunt more than they love their village. Leaving is safer for now, but true safety does not exist in Myanmar. Mu Naw's country is in free fall, a state of bewildering, breathtaking conflict. It feels as if everyone is fighting everyone. Families like Mu Naw's--a Buddhist woman married to a Christian man, neither of whom wanted to fight--are caught in the crossfire from every side. Fleeing is hard on the children; they must be carried and cajoled and whispered to. It is hard on Mu Naw's aging female relatives, all referred to as "grandmother" with the deference and love she gives to all older women; the grandmothers have joints and bent bones that slow them down. It is hard on the young adults, jumping like rabbits at every sound in the forests, aching with fear for the children and the grandmothers, bearing the weight of packs bound in woven cloth with everything they can carry. It is hard on Mu Naw's father. Years ago, his right leg was blown off by a land mine, and though his body has adjusted to the makeshift crutch he fashioned then from a branch, his back and arms ache as he pushes through the damp, sticky branches that cling to him and pull at him. Once, when they stop to rest, he tells Mu Naw that the forest where he walked into a land mine was the same as this one, that she should stay close to him. As they walk again, she can see that sameness wears on him, warns him. He snaps at his wife all day, but not at Mu Naw. At night, he is silent. Mu Naw's mother, terrified for her children and for herself, turns her anger on her husband. The sight of his blown-off leg depresses her. Her abrasive tone sets everyone else on edge. One of the grandmothers chides her gently, but Mu Naw's mother only snaps back. The other grandmothers murmur among themselves--they do not approve of a woman who is so angry, who speaks her mind to her elders. Mu Naw is unaware of the whispered conversations curling through the camp. She tucks herself next to her father, who leans back against a tree with his amputated leg stretched toward the low fire. He strokes her hair behind her ear, and she sleeps, mouth open, her small body weighed down with exhaustion. Her parents' tension is her country's war in miniature. Mu Naw does not know it yet, but her family has already shattered. Like broken glass in a frame, the cracks spread, deepen, divide, but the glass stays in place. For now. That was the day Mu Naw crossed her first border. Excerpted from After the Last Border: Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America by Jessica Goudeau All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.Table of Contents
Author's Note | p. xi |
Character Maps | p. xiv |
Prologue: MU NAW (Myanmar/Thailand Border, 1989) | p. 1 |
Part 1 | |
Chapter 1 MU NAW (Austin, Texas, USA, April 2007) | p. 7 |
Chapter 2 US Refugee Resettlement, 1945-1951 | p. 14 |
Chapter 3 HASNA (Daraa, Syria, March 2011) | p. 22 |
Chapter 4 MU NAW (Austin, Texas, USA, April 2007) | p. 38 |
Chapter 5 HASNA (Daraa, Syria, March 2011) | p. 47 |
Chapter 6 Mu NAW (Austin, Texas, USA, April 2007) | p. 57 |
Chapter 7 HASNA (Daraa, Syria, March 2011) | p. 71 |
Chapter 8 MU NAW (Austin, Texas, USA, May-August 2007) | p. 79 |
Chapter 9 HASNA (Daraa, Syria, March 2011) | p. 87 |
Chapter 10 Us Refugee Resettlement, 1880-1945 | p. 94 |
Chapter 11 HASNA (Daraa, Syria, March-April 2011) | p. 101 |
Chapter 12 MU NAW (Austin, Texas, USA, September 2007) | p. 113 |
Chapter 13 HASNA (Daraa, Syria/Ramtha, Jordan, April-July 2011) | p. 124 |
Chapter 14 MU NAW (Austin, Texas, USA, October 2007-April 2008) | p. 139 |
Part 2 | |
Chapter 15 HASNA (Ramtha, Jordan, December 2012-February 2013) | p. 149 |
Chapter 16 Us Refugee Resettlement, 1950-1963 | p. 163 |
Chapter 17 MU NAW (Austin, Texas, USA, April 2008-March 2009) | p. 167 |
Chapter 18 HASNA (Ramtha and Irbed, Jordan, February-December 2013) | p. 175 |
Chapter 19 Us Refugee Resettlement, 1965-1980 | p. 184 |
Chapter 20 MU NAW (Austin, Texas, USA, October 2011) | p. 194 |
Chapter 21 HASNA (Irbed, Jordan, December 2013-July 2016) | p. 199 |
Part 3 | |
Chapter 22 MU NAW (Austin, Texas, USA, August 2014, January 2015) | p. 217 |
Chapter 23 US Refugee Resettlement, 1980-2006 | p. 224 |
Chapter 24 HASNA (Austin, Texas, USA, July 2016) | p. 235 |
Chapter 25 MU NAW (Austin, Texas, USA, May 2015) | p. 243 |
Chapter 26 Us Refugee Resettlement, 2008-2015 | p. 249 |
Chapter 27 HASNA (Austin, Texas, USA, October-November 2016) | p. 260 |
Chapter 28 MU NAW (Austin, Texas, USA, March 2016) | p. 268 |
Chapter 29 Us Refugee Resettlement, 2015-2018 | p. 272 |
Chapter 30 HASNA (Austin, Texas, USA, January-July 2017) | p. 284 |
Epilogue: MU NAW (Austin, Texas, USA, January 2016) | p. 295 |
Afterword | p. 299 |
Acknowledgments | p. 309 |
Notes | p. 313 |
Further Reading | p. 333 |
Index | p. 335 |