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Journal of Children's Literature

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The Refugee Experience
in Books for Adolescents
LAUREN AIMONETTE LIANG, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH
BETH BRENDLER, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
LEE GALDA, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
Why do we want our students to read? Certainly, practice at reading makes
students better readers. Reading widely introduces them to authors, genres, and
styles they have yet to encounter. Reading deeply allows them to think about the
varied perspectives that individual authors bring to
bear on similar ideas. Reading fiction also serves as
"mirror and window," allowing readers to find them-
selves in the pages of a book while also discovering
characters different from themselves (Galda & Cullinan,
2006). Reading can give students time to think about
the experiences and ideas that arise through reading,
freeing them of the demands of the real world (Brit-
ton, 1970). This opportunity to think about ideas and
experiences that they encounter in books, especially
fictional narratives, sets the stage for the possibility of
seeing the world through the eyes of others, even if for
just a little while (Galda, 1998).
Many authors of books for adolescents write about
things that are happening in the world, so that each
year we find new adolescent fiction that explores timely
topics. Reading these books allows students to consider
the current events in their world from a perspective that
is perhaps wider than their own experiences would al-
low. One such topic is the refugee experience. With this
in mind, we sought to determine what that experience
is and how it is depicted in contemporary fiction for
adolescents.
WHERE ARE THE ADOLESCENT NOVELS
ABOUT THE REFUGEE EXPERIENCE?
As we began our search for adolescent contemporary
fiction about the refugee experience, we were disheart-
ened at what we found: There is a dearth of adolescent
fiction titles on this topic. This is unfortunate, espe-
Journal of Children's Literature v35 n2
cially given the current global climate and the plight of
refugees world-wide over the last few decades. Further,
with the increasing diversity in United States schools,
we are in desperate need of making available more cul-
turally diverse literature to our students. While there
were approximately 10,000 books for children and
early adolescents published in the U.S. last year, pre-
cious few dealt with cultural diversity and even fewer
with refugee issues. Accurate portrayals of people from
other cultures are especially important when children
are exposed to negative and angry feelings about those
who have been forced to flee to our country. If little
quality literature about those who seek refuge in the
United States is read or discussed in the classroom, it
will be difficult to combat the alienation and discrimi-
nation that refugees face in their new country.
While we found very few adolescent contemporary
fiction novels about the refugee experience, we did
discover slightly more titles revolving around the im-
migrant experience. Immigrants come to America for
a variety of reasons, ranging from better economic
opportunities to reuniting with family. Refugees have
a special status. They are fleeing their home countries
because they must do so to survive, most often running
from war or oppression. These are people who are un-
able to live safely in their home country, who need the
sanctuary of another country. This makes their situation
both more dangerous and more immediate than that
of a typical immigrant. With this distinction between
refugee and immigrant status in mind, we explored the
59
Liang, Brendler, and Galda
books for adolescents currently in print that depict the
fictional story of a character or characters fleeing their
home country for sanctuary in the United States.
THE SEARCH FOR NovELs
We conducted a systematic and thorough search that
yielded a small number of titles that were available, of
good quality, and presented the refugee experience
in the United States. The criteria we used are listed in
Table 1.
First, we limited our search to novel-length narra-
tive fiction for adolescents. Because we were interested
in relatively contemporary stories about refugees, we
focused on books published between 1990 and 2006,
adding that the book must currently be in print, as well
as published by one of the major publishing houses.
These criteria helped to ensure that the books on our
bibliography would be fairly easy to find by any inter-
ested adolescent or educator.
Next, we established criteria regarding the book
content. We decided that the setting of the book must
be between 1960 and 2005 in order to focus on more re-
cent refugee situations, rather than those stories related
to WWII. We also looked for main characters, typically
adolescents because of the young adult genre, who were
refugees themselves. This eliminated a few titles where
the main character was a child who had been adopted
at birth, lived her whole life in the United States, and
encountered a refugee from her birth country. We also
focused solely on refugees to the United States, thus
eliminating a few titles, often internationally published,
where characters fled to England or other countries,
such as The Other Side of Truth (Naidoo, 2001).
Finally, we added a criterion related to the quality of
the book. Concerned about the book meeting standards
for excellence in adolescent literature, we only included
titles that we considered well-written and had received
a rating of "4" or above by The Horn Book Guide. A "4"
indicates recommended, with minor flaws. After a long
and thorough search, these criteria left us with nine
titles, described in Table 2.
The nine titles vary in the country of origin for the
refugees, from Cambodia to Guatemala to Haiti and
beyond. But all can be organized around one of three
major foci: (1) the "home country," i.e., what happened
in the home country that provoked the flight to the
United States, (2) the "journey," i.e., the actual flight
60
Table 1. Criteria for selection of novels.
"* Titles must be narrative fiction novels for
adolescents. (Short story collections are not
included.)
"• Titles must be published by a major publishing
house.
"• Titles must be published between 1990 and
2006 and be currently in print.
"• The setting of the story must be between 1960
and 2006.
"• The main character in the story must be a refu-
gee.
"* Refugee characters in the story must be head-
ing to the United States and arrive in the United
States by the conclusion of the story.
"• Titles must have received a rating of "4" or
higher from the Horn Book Guide.
of the refugee from the home country to the United
States, or (3) the "transition to the United States," i.e.,
what happened in the United States when the refugees
arrived. Our findings of these three major foci mimic
what Lamme, Fu, and Lowery (2004) found in their
explorations of the immigrant and refugee experiences
in children's literature. Their "stages" -"making the
transition," "making the connection," and "becoming
American" -match well with the categories we deter-
mined. Like Lamme, Fu, and Lowery, we noted that
most of the books depicted all three periods or stages,
but we found that each novel we examined tended to
emphasize a particular period more than the others.
We found other commonalities in the themes of the
novels that match earlier findings regarding children's
and adolescent literature about immigrant experiences.
Angel (2003) defines the components of young adult
literature about immigrants as "the experience of loss,
of crossing oceans and continents, leaving behind the
familiar, losing a cultural history, and then blending
into a new culture" (p. 52). We, too, found this emphasis
on loss and blending evident in the refugee novels. We
saw repeated expressions of loss, homesickness, and
loneliness. We noted characters looking back on their
past, valuing keepsakes and traditional celebrations,
and lacking complete families, or enduring the depres-
sion of parental figures, much as Levy (1999) found
Journal of Children's Literature v35 n2
 The Refugee Experience in Books for Adolescents

Table 2. Titles and information.

Main Special
Title Category Setting Character Notes
Alvarez, Julia The Home Dominican Republic to Can be read as a companion to
United States (New York Anita, 11-13 How the Garcia Girls Lost Their
Before We Were Free Country City, NY), 1960 Accents (Alvarez, 1991)

Danticat, Edwidge The Home Haiti to United States Also spends a good deal of
Celiane, 12 time on thetatestransition to the
Behind the Mountains Country (Brooklyn, NY), 2000 U nite
United States

Cambodia to Thailand Story spans 5 years

Ho, Minfong The Home to United States Nakri, 12 - 17 (Also published by Orchard as
Gathering the Dew Country (Philadelphia, PA), 1975- The Stone Goddess)
1980
Mikalesen, Ben Guatemala to United Story details the dangerous
Red Midnight The Journey States (Florida) via Gulf Santiago, 12 trip by small cayuco across the
of Mexico, 1981 sea
Brown, Jackie The Laos to Thailand to Some emphasis on
Little Cricket Transition to United States (St. Paul, Kia, 12 stereotyping
the U.S. MN), 1970s
Buss, Fran Leeper The El Salvador to United Better suited for more mature
Journeyof the Sparrows Transition to States (Chicago, IL), late Maria, 15 adolescent audiences
the U.S. 1980s
Placide, Jean The Haiti to United States Better suited for more mature
Fresh Girl Transition to (Brooklyn, NY), early Mardi, 14 adolescent audiences
the U.S. 1990s
Shea, Pegi Deitz The Laos to Thailand Includes focus on
Tangled Threads: Transition to to United States Mai, 13 relationships and young
A Hmong Girl's Story the U.S. (Providence, RI), 1994 marriage
Veciana-Suarez, Ana The Cuba to United States More attention paid to idea of
Flight to Freedom Transition to (Miami,Yara, 13 returning to homeland than in
the U.S. other titles

in his exploration of the Southeast Asian experience
in children's books. We also saw repeated subplots of
characters dealing with discrimination and exploita-
tion similar to findings by Cai (1992) and Lamme, Fu,
and Lowery (2004).
In our examination of the novels, we found in addi-
tion to this that four major topics were typically present
in contemporary fiction about the refugee experience.
The first common topic we found was the depiction of
the United States before the refugee reaches America
(the "idea") and after (the "reality"); second, the cat-
egorization of the main character as more reactive or
more proactive as compared to other characters; third,
descriptions of tensions between the old life and the
new after the journey, and fourth; the depiction or defi-
nition of freedom by the characters.
To illustrate how these topics are woven through-
out adolescent novels about the refugee experience,
we discuss in depth three novels, Before We Were Free
(Alvarez, 2002), Red Midnight (Mikalesen, 2002), and
Journey of the Sparrows (Buss, 1991), that represent well
the full list of titles that we found. Each also represents
one of the three foci that we found in refugee novels
in general. Before We Were Free focuses on the home
country, Red Midnight on the journey, and Journey of the
Sparrows on the transition to the United States. In our
discussion of each novel we will demonstrate how the
four major topics listed above are highlighted.
DiscussioN OF THE THREE EXAMPLE NOVELS
The Home Country: Before We Were Free
As stated earlier, books that fit in this category focus
on the experiences of the main character and his or her
family in their home country. The general emphasis in
the stories is on what causes the flight to the United
States. Near the end of the books when the characters

Journal of Children's Literature v35 n2 61l

Liang, Brendler, and Galda
reach America, this emphasis remains; in describing
the adjustment to the new life, the authors focus on the
characters' reconciliation of the frightening past events
in the old world as the major point needed for adjust-
ment to the new.
Three titles in our bibliography fall into this catego-
ry: Before We Were Free by Julia Alvarez (2002), Behind
the Mountains by Edwidge Danticat (2002), and Gather-
ing the Dew by Minfong Ho (2003). All three focus on
young girls who face turmoil and upheaval in their
home countries, eventually leading to the flight of their
families to the United States. The following discussion
of Before We Were Free, by the award-winning author
Julia Alvarez, illustrates how the depiction of the U. S.,
the characterization of the protagonist as reactive or
proactive, the tension between the old life and the new,
and the depiction of freedom are often represented in
refugee novels from this category.
With her father and uncle heavily involved in the
plot to revolt against the current dictator of the Domini-
can Republic, 11-year-old Anita discovers that freedom
is being able to live without secrets. Before We Were Free
depicts this time of secrecy in Anita's young life as her
neighbors and family begin to flee the country, and her
immediate family is forced into hiding. The privileged
life that Anita has grown up with quickly disappears as
tensions in the country rise, and the involvement of her
family in the revolution is revealed.
Depiction of the United States. The U. S. is the embodi-
ment of freedom to Anita while she is living in the
midst of the fear and violence of the dictatorship and
revolution. The U. S. will be where her family can again
be together, where the secrecy she has been living with
will be gone. To Anita, the U. S. as a country is not terri-
bly important; more important is simply a place where
her life will regain some sense of normalcy.
However, after reaching the U. S., Anita finds life
there is quite different, and more difficult, than she
had imagined. Although much of the extended family
is together again, they are devastated by the imprison-
ment and execution of Anita's Papi and Tio Toni. The
U.S. government, whom they thought to be their ally,
does not provide help in rescuing Anita's father and
uncle. The family lives in a state of limbo, waiting to
return to their homeland. Anita is not put in regular
classes at school because the family sees their situation
as temporary, and when she later is placed in a regu-
62
lar classroom, she is held back a year. Anita wonders
how she could stand living in "this world of strangers
and grey light" (p. 143). By the end of the novel, she is
puzzled that her classmates at the American school in
the Dominican Republic thought the United States was
the greatest country in the world.
A reactive protagonist. Anita becomes a refugee as a
result of her parents' decision to risk everything to fight
for truth and freedom. She is profoundly influenced by
her father's integrity and search for justice, yet despite
the involvement of her family in the revolution, Anita
seems to simply react to the situations she faces rather
than to actively play a role. Largely uncertain of what
is happening early on, a stance that seems reasonable
given her age at the beginning of the story, she gradu-
ally begins to learn more about her family's situation as
it becomes increasingly dire. Her reaction, however, is to
serve primarily as a recorder of information, thoughtfully
pondering the reasons behind the activities taking place.
Anita's child-like reactions are similar to many of the
protagonists in this category of refugee novels. When
the focus is on the situation in the home country, the
protagonists tend to be more reactive than the more
mature proactive stances other characters take in books
that fit into the other two categories of the "journey"
and the "transition." This unique point of view allows
the reader to absorb all the frantic and terrifying activ-
ity happening throughout the book, and gain an under-
standing of the meaning of freedom of speech and basic
civil rights, fought for so desperately in war-torn coun-
tries. A reactive stance on the part of the protagonist
helps the reader to more easily develop empathy for the
characters and better understand the terror and sense
of helplessness many refugees face when struggling to
remain in their home country.
As Anita discovers the repression in her home coun-
try and the heroism in her own family, she becomes
stronger and more proactive, a stance that is commonly
seen towards the end of the story in books in this cat-
egory, primarily when the characters do manage to
escape to the United States. In Anita's case her diary
becomes a way to stand up and be heard. She writes, "If
I stop [writing] now, they've really won. They've taken
away everything, even the story of what is happening
to us" (p. 124).
Tensions between the old and new. Upon arrival in the
U. S., Anita faces a new life that she is not sure she is
Journal of Children's Literature v35 n2

ready to embrace. Despite her hope that this country
would provide the freedom from secrecy that she has
yearned for, she finds that even in the U. S. freedom
does not come easily and without sacrifice.
Anita discovers she cannot leave the apartment
with other family members because they are hiding
the number of people living there from the landlord.
She experiences racism and sees that everyone in the
United States is not equally free. Further, she finds that
she feels like an outsider, even among her extended
family. She is forced to ask family members who have
been in the U. S. for longer than she to speak in Spanish
as their English is too fluent for her to understand. She
notices her cousins now dress like American teens and
are preoccupied with boys.
Anita is free from tyranny in the U. S., but her heart
and soul are still in the Dominican Republic. She says
it is "as if I had been buried in sadness and my body
got free, but the rest of me is still in captivity" (p. 159).
While she yearns to return, she also recognizes the
need to remain in the U. S. for her own and her family's
safety. Eventually Anita realizes that she cannot truly
be free from this tension anywhere until she is able to
find joy in life again.
Freedom. Freedom as a concept plays a major role in
Before We Were Free, as evident even in the title. Perhaps
due to the secrecy and forced hiding that increases as
the story progresses, Anita's view of freedom is defined
by what is taken away from her. Her extended family
flees the country, her uncle Toni disappears, and her
sister, Lucinda, is sent to the U. S. to avoid the dictator's
penchant for pretty, young girls, leaving Anita to define
freedom in part as the freedom to be with one's family.
Lucinda's experience changes Anita's view of men and
creates a sudden perceived threat to her own physical
safety and freedom as a young woman. Anita's school
is closed and she begins to understand firsthand what
her father had told her about freedom through educa-
tion. Her sense of safety and personal freedom within
her home is taken when the secret police, the SIM, first
force their way in and search the house, and later she
is told she must not talk inside the house because the
SIM is listening. Freedom becomes for Anita simply the
return of these personal rights.
Anita responds to the increasing lack of freedom
by turning inward and becoming silent. Her silence
is a parallel to the silencing of voices in her home and
Journal of Children's Literature v35 n2
I!
The Refugee Experience in Books for Adolescents
her homeland. As her family becomes more secretive,
Anita finds it harder to speak. The basis for trust in
her life is shattered, so she becomes unwilling to risk
speaking. Anita's voice only returns when she and
her mother go into hiding and she begins to use her
diary as a way to tell the world the truth about what
is happening in the Dominican Republic. Anita refers
to her diary as "another voice I can listen to. A radio,
tuned to my own heart" (p. 111). Her diary represents
her voice and her freedom. She knows she has to keep
that "radio" turned on. She says, "When I write in it,
I feel as if I've got a set of wings, and I am flying over
my life and looking down and thinking, Anita, it's not
as bad as you think" (p. 124). Anita's diary becomes the
record of both her family's quest for freedom and her
growing independent voice as she changes from a child
to a young adult.
The Journey: Red Midnight
Books that fit in this category focus on the actual
flight from the home country to the country of refuge.
These books are often action-packed and full of cliff-
hangers as the refugees fight extraordinary circum-
stances to reach their goal and escape the oppression or
violence that precipitated their flight. While not typical
quest stories in that the journey is linear rather than
circular and the protagonist does not return "home,"
these stories contain conflicts and resolutions during
the journey that result in stronger, wiser protagonists
who, in these cases, find a new home.
Only one title from our search fit most squarely into
this category. Red Midnight, by Ben Mikalesen (2002),
begins in the home country, focuses on the journey to
freedom, and ends shortly after arrival in the United
States. The electrifying beginning-"I try to forget
the night they burned my village" (p. 1)-details the
precipitating event that forces 12-year-old Santiago to
flee his native Guatemala with his four-year-old sis-
ter, Angelina. When soldiers attack their village, only
Santiago and Angelina survive the brutal assault. The
children flee, reaching their uncle's small sailing cayuco,
and set off on a journey that will take them through
dangerous Guatemalan waters, into the Caribbean, and
across the Gulf of Mexico to Florida. Santiago's journey
toward safety and hope allows him to fulfill his quest
for a voice, an opportunity to tell the truth about what
is happening in his country, similar to Anita's search
63
Liang, Brendler, and Galda
for voice in Before We Were Free. Even as he struggles
toward this goal, he also develops his own inner voice,
as he learns who he really is and what he is capable of,
the essential work of an adolescent who is thrust into
an adult world.
Depiction of the United States. Santiago does not es-
pecially want to leave Guatemala, and he himself does
not express a desire to go to the U. S. Rather, it is his
uncle and an older neighbor of his uncle's who refer to
America as the place of hope and dreams, describing it
as place where "all children go to school and learn to
read and write," (p. 10), "rich people share their money
and do not take away land from the poor," and "even the
poor have clothes, cars, and food" (p. 50). This stands in
direct contrast to the portrayal of the economic inequal-
ity and political turmoil enveloping the home country.
Santiago loves Guatemala, with its mountains that are
"very green and beautiful, with forests so thick that
we use machetes to cut our way along the paths.. .The
sides of our mountains have green fields of maize and
forests with many birds." However, Santiago's people
are poor, hungry, and uneducated, and "always carry
machetes, because there are many things in our coun-
try that can hurt us" (pp. 5-6). Danger comes especially
from the war between the guerillas and the soldiers,
who "work for the rich people, los ricos," (p. 8) and
terrorize the country people, especially the indigenous
Mayans, taking their land, raping, murdering, burning.
Guatemala, home, is beautiful and beloved, but also
dangerous and terrifying.
The United States is not only depicted as "just" and
"safe," but as a place where Santiago can be the voice of
his people and tell what happened the night his village
and his family were destroyed, where he can "keep
alive.. .the dreams of all indigenos" (p. 51). In the U. S.
he will be safe from nights when the sky glows red.
The reality of Santiago's arrival in the U. S. is, however,
ironic. As he, his sister, and the battered cayuco run
aground on a Florida beach, a man shouts, "It's some of
those stinking boat people," while another yells, "Get
out of here! This is a private club!" and others look at
them with "anger in their eyes" (p. 198), indicating that
not all rich Americans are happy to share. Fortunately,
some are, and a woman with a "kind look in her eyes"
enlists others to carry the children onto the shore where
they receive medical care and small kindnesses. Even
the Immigration and Naturalization Service men, stem
64
and forbidding at first, end up smiling, telling Santiago
that he is brave. In spite of the mixed responses to them,
it seems that the children will, indeed, be better off in
America than in Guatemala.
A proactive protagonist. Because Santiago does not
directly express dreams of America, he at first appears
to be more of a reactive character, simply following the
directions of his uncle to take his sister to the United
States. However, it is quickly apparent as the journey
progresses that he is actually very proactive, making
swift and clever decisions that protect his sister and
himself. While initially a quest for safety, the journey
to America is also the crucible in which Santiago forges
his own mental and physical strength.
The initial conflict in the story is the political conflict
in the country, the war that rages between the gueril-
las and the soldiers. As a 12-year-old, Santiago has no
agency in this conflict, a reflection of the lack of agency
felt by most indigenos. When Santiago flees his village
with Angelina, it is because his mother tells him to go,
to save himself and his sister. When he leaves his dying
uncle after the village is burned, his uncle tells him that
he "is now a man" and gives him his treasured compass,
urging him to take the cayuco and follow the compass
arrow north, to "tell of this evil." With these pleas from
the adults he has trusted all of his life shaping his quest,
Santiago embarks on a journey that is now his own.
Santiago's ingenuity gets himself and his sister to his
uncle's house, where they are helped by kind neighbors,
Enrico and Silvia. Enrico then sails with the children
through Guatemalan waters to the entrance to the Ca-
ribbean. While this help is crucial to the escape, even at
these early stages Santiago is beginning to take charge.
He knows that he is not a sailor, yet he takes the first
stroke of the paddle in the long journey to America. He
acknowledges his fear and works to overcome it. He
cares for his sister with a cleverness that marks much
of what he does, devising games to help her stay quiet
when she must, eat what she must, and be safe. He
uses what little he knows about the wider world, and a
rough map that he cannot read, to figure out where he
might be as he's sailing beyond the sight of land. Even
when it seems that everything is lost, he never quite
gives up, as he knows that he must complete this jour-
ney to America "if we are ever to know hope" (p. 53).
In spite of self-doubt, he sails on, a perfect metaphor
for adolescence.
Journal of Children's Literature v35 n2

Santiago's internal conflict, his self-doubt, is mir-
rored by the conflict with nature that the ocean pro-
vides, a formidable natural antagonist. On the open
ocean he battles loneliness, sleeplessness, and hunger,
while he also struggles against the sun, salt water, and
the ocean itself.., its winds and calms, its waves and
troughs. As Santiago thinks, "the ocean is always a
stranger" (p. 110). Gradually, he learns to sleep in fits
and starts, he learns what uncooked beans do to hun-
gry stomachs, he figures out how to make a fish hook,
fashions a plastic "windshield" from garbage floating
in the water, uses the same garbage to make his sister a
"life jacket." These accomplishments give him courage,
and he begins to realize that success lies in both luck
and his own actions: "Luck did not make this hook" (p.
186). He feels "strong, like the cayuco" (p. 180). Even so,
the ocean has the upper hand, and "each day the ocean
kills us a little more" (p. 174). The conflict between the
children in that battered little boat and the inhuman
force of the ocean is constant, and the resolution, like
much of the journey, is a combination of luck, courage,
and ingenuity.
Tensions between the old and the new. Luck, courage,
and ingenuity may have gotten Santiago and Angelina
to America, but once there, they need the help of oth-
ers. Santiago can now do no more. The brief, final chap-
ter reveals some of the ways that the children's lives
change when they arrive in America. They are taken to
a hospital and cared for, and Santiago remembers that,
in Guatemala, "nurses and doctors are for rich people"
(p. 198). He worries about talking to the Immigration
and Naturalization Service because "in my country we
are always afraid of the government.. .but these men
are not angry" (p. 204). These two contrasts between
America and Guatemala make it clear that Santiago is
in a better place.
After he talks with the INS, Santiago asks if the
government will send him and Angelina back to Gua-
temala. Although it seemed as though some did not
believe his story at first, a nurse tells him no, because
of what he has experienced, he will not have to go back
until he wants to. Santiago replies, "Someday, I want to
go back... But I do not want to go back until the soldiers
stop killing mothers and fathers and children" (p. 208).
He knows that he will dream of the red sky for the rest
of his life, but he also knows "that when the morning
comes, the red will disappear and the sun will shine
Journal of Children's Literature v35 n2
The Refugee Experience in Books for Adolescents
and the sky will be blue again" (p. 208). He is safe, but
he will not forget. Nor, given the mixed reception when
he reached America, will he always be welcome. These
future tensions are left unexplored, as the story ends
with the children still recovering from their journey in
the care of warm, empathetic nurses. Assimilation into
the American way of life is beyond the scope of this
story.
Freedom. Santiago's quest has been for safety and for
the freedom to tell the truth about what happened to
him and his family. When his uncle set him on his jour-
ney, he told Santiago that "there is a wind that blows
and tries to help this country .... Go now! Be part of this
wind. You are the only person who can tell of this evil"
(p. 3). He hears his parents say that "if enough people
hope and dream and fight for what we know is right,
Guatemala can change, even for us, the poor campesinos
indigenos" (p. 19). Enrique tells Santiago that Uncle
Ramos "built his cayuco... to someday sail away from
Guatemala. That was his dream. He wanted to go to
where people could speak without fear. He wanted to
tell the world of the evil that is here in Guatemala" (p.
48). By fleeing with Angelina, making his way against
terrible odds across the ocean, and finding refuge in
America, Santiago found the freedom to use his voice
to tell others about what happened to his village, to his
family, to his country. When the media come to inter-
view him at the hospital, he tells them how his uncle
set him on this journey toward truth, and so he "tells
everything that has happened" (p. 205). In the end, he
does get to be a voice for his people, to tell his story. He
has found both his voice and hope for a better future
for himself and for his country.
The Transition to the United States:
Journey of the Sparrows
Books in this category focus on the transition of
newly arrived refugees to life in the United States. This
was the most plentiful category we found, with five
titles: Little Cricket by Jackie Brown (2004), Journey of the
Sparrows by Fran Leeper Buss (1991), Tangled Threads:
A Hmong Girl's Story by Pegi Deitz Shea (2003), Flight
to Freedom by Ana Veciana-Suarez (2002), and Fresh Girl
by Jean Placide (2002).
In contrast to some of the gentler stories for younger
adolescents found in contemporary fiction about the
refugee experience, the gritty Journey of the Sparrows
65
 Liang, Brendler, and Galda
by Fran Leeper Buss (1991) holds nothing back. The
depiction of the United States, the characterization of
the protagonist as reactive or proactive, the tension
between the old life and the new, and the depiction of
freedom as found in the novel are typical of how these
topics are often represented in refugee novels falling in
this category, and interestingly, the harsher tone is actu-
ally typical of this category as well. Of the five titles we
found for this category, we noted that the majority were
more appropriate for older adolescents.
Depiction of the United States. Journey of the Sparrows
begins with its main characters nailed in a crate in the
back of a truck driving across the border into the United
States. Fifteen-year-old Maria, her older, pregnant sister,
Julia, and their younger brother, Oscar, escaped their
ravaged village in El Salvador with their mother and
youngest sister after soldiers first killed their father and
Julia's husband, then raped Julia, and finally destroyed
their home. After fleeing on foot into Mexico, the three
were able to pay "coyotes" enough money to bring them
to the U.S. in crates, while their mother stayed behind to
care for their now ill baby sister until the three can raise
enough money to help them escape as well.
For Maria, Julia, and Oscar, the United States is not
the promised land of freedom necessarily, but more
the closest safe haven they can find. Their village is
destroyed and the surrounding areas in El Salvador no
longer safe. They cannot afford to stay hidden in Mexico;
it is very risky to try to find work as the Mexican police
send El Salvadorian refugees back to El Salvador if they
are found. As Julia explains, "But if we go home, we'll
be killed. If we stay in Mexico, we'll starve. If we don't
go north, we'll die" (p. 15). The U. S. is the only way
out, but not necessarily the place of dreams that it is for
other refugees. The U. S., though, is still depicted as a
land of hope. It is a place where jobs can be found and
hopefully enough money earned to bring the rest of the
family across the border to be together once again.
A proactiveprotagonist.Maria has long known that she
is the one who will have to save the family. Shortly be-
fore her village was attacked by the Guardias,her Papa
had reminded her, "You can read and write. And you've
got the gift of an artist. They can't take that away. You're
the one who'll save the family" (p. 38). And, in fact, it is
Maria's ability to read and write and her artistic talents
that help her to obtain jobs that sustain the small family
in Chicago.
66
While Julia takes a bit more of the lead on the initial
trip across the border, once the sisters and brother reach
Chicago, Maria is clearly the leader. In addition to her
job, she works to improve her English, finds shelters
that offer free meals for Oscar, and begins selling her
paintings to local stores. She also manages to prevent
Julia from becoming a prostitute to earn money to
bring their little sister to the U. S. by seeking help in all
the ways she can.
Perhaps the bravest and most proactive step that
Maria undertakes is her return to Mexico to find her
little sister and bring her to the U. S. Maria risks cap-
ture and undergoes a grueling journey to find her sister
and sneak her back across the border. She first tries to
wade across the dangerous border river-the river
where "the water looks shallow, but there's currents
and holes. If la migra doesn't get you, the river might
... and there're bandits hiding who rob people and
rape the girls" (p. 145). But Maria falls with her baby
sister, nearly drowns, and must turn back. With some
luck, she finds a man with a raft to bring them across
with another group and manages to make it to the U. S.
Once there, she must face another perilous journey to
Chicago, escaping border patrol and immigration offi-
cials all the way. Maria manages to board a bus, squeak
by immigration police safely, and soon they are on their
way. Although her future looks precarious, it seems
that the determined and brave Maria will survive and
save her family as well.
Tensions between old and new. While the sisters' and
brother's adaptation to the new culture in the United
States is similar to the other refugee characters in con-
temporary adolescent fiction, theirs is not the typical
amazement at the abundance of goods or the safety
and freedom; their illegal status forces an existence
of poverty and fear, although not to the extreme they
experienced in El Salvador. This constant fear of being
caught and sent back creates an underlying tension in
the story quite different from the typical adjustment to
the new United States culture. Seeing a policeman sim-
ply eating his meal in a McDonald's, Maria and Oscar
run, terribly frightened, for blocks, with Oscar crying
nearly hysterically about the "shadow man" (p. 45). Re-
cruiting posters for the U. S. Army frighten the siblings
needlessly as they recall the El Salvadoran Guardias.
But while these incidents seem a bit more related to the
family's horrifying experience in El Salvador, the im-
Journal of Children's Literature v35 n2

migration raid on Maria's workplace and the incidents
with the border patrol are very much unique to their
new experience in the United States.
The small community of local Salvadoran refugees
in Chicago helps support the three emotionally as
they adapt to the new life. They provide initial hous-
ing, meals, and job prospects, as well as providing the
emotional support of an extended family. When Maria
returns to Mexico to help her little sister escape across
the border, it is the community that helps to arrange
it with financial support, maps, connections to help
along the way, and much prayer. Buss's message is
clear: the community is necessary to help lighten the
harsh plight of the refugee and the difficult adaptation
to the new culture.
Depiction of freedom. As in Red Midnight and Before
We Were Free, because of the extreme situation the
family faced in their home country, freedom is defined
as safety for Maria and her family: safety from being
physically harmed or destroyed, safety from the terror
of being suddenly taken away from each other, safety
from the terrors of hunger and illness. This equation
of "freedom equals safety" is commonly seen in books
about the refugee experience that focus on the transi-
tion to the United States. Many characters in these
books are hard-pressed to realize they are actually safe
from the war-tom environment from which they had
to flee. Because of the illegal status of Maria, Julia, and
Oscar, full safety and freedom is not quite realized in
this particular story. The poverty and fear of deporta-
tion they face actually paint an unfortunately very
realistic portrait of what many refugees to the United
States encounter.
While freedom is largely depicted as the absence of
fear, Buss also equates freedom with hope. Throughout
the story she uses the image of the beautiful and rare
quetzal bird to signify hope. Maria repeatedly tells the
story of saving a quetzal bird a hunter had captured to
sell by releasing him from his cage. The amazing colors
of the quetzal are referred to throughout the story; they
are reflected in the shawl of the kind homeless woman
who befriends Oscar (p. 56), seen in the bright colors
Maria uses in the pictures she sells, and in the story
Maria often tells her younger siblings of the magical
sparrow who helps a young boy across the river safely
to the United States (p. 29). Despite the grim reality of
Journey of the Sparrows, Buss consistently expresses a
Journal of Children's Literature v35 n2
The Refugee Experience in Books for Adolescents
message of hope, full freedom, and a bright future for
the determined young refugees.
CONCLUSION
Our exploration of contemporary fiction for adoles-
cents about the refugee experience yielded three find-
ings. First, the novels that exist in this area tend to eas-
ily divide into three categories: books that focus on the
experience of the refugee in his or her home country,
books that focus on the journey of the refugee from the
home country to the U. S., and books that focus on the
transition to the new life of the refugee in the United
States.
Secondly, we found that the novels typically address
four topics in some depth. First, they depict the United
States both before the flight and after the arrival there,
with the views of America often changing. America
as a place of safety appeared prominently in all three
novels we highlighted, not surprising since all three
protagonists and their families were fleeing violence.
America as a place to realize dreams appeared most
prominently in Red Midnight, but in none was America
depicted as a perfect place, with reality tempering hope.
These two images, America as safe and America as not
entirely perfect, were seen throughout all the titles in
our bibliography.
These books also tend to have protagonists who are
either notably reactive or proactive, especially in com-
parison to other refugee characters, with some rising to
the demands of the refugee situation by becoming pro-
active, as Santiago did in Red Midnight. Anita, because
of her age, was proactive in small ways by keeping a
diary, by falling in love in the face of tremendous ob-
stacles. Although the least proactive of the characters,
her very survival and her resilient spirit demonstrate
her strength of character. Maria, the oldest protagonist
of the three, was also the most proactive as the respon-
sibility fell to her to save her family. In all of the titles
in our bibliography, we noted similarly that even the
protagonists who might be classified as more reactive
than other characters took on proactive stances from
time to time. We also found that older protagonists
tended to be much more proactive than younger, as
would be expected.
These novels always concentrate at some point on
the tensions the refugee characters face between their
former lives in their previous country as compared to
67
Liang, Brendler, and Galda
their new lives in the United States. Journey of the Spar-
rows explores this most thoroughly, as the bulk of the
novel is set in America. The tensions that Maria and
her family face are very much influenced by their il-
legal status. Santiago also worried about being illegal
and was greatly relieved to be told that he would not
be deported. In the few days he is in America before
the novel ends, he realizes that he will have difficulties,
even with his legal status. And Anita, even though she
joins family when she arrives in America, knows how
difficult it will be to fit in as well as to forget. In all three
cases the strength of family ties is fundamental in both
the home country and in America. We found this to be
true in all the novels in our bibliography.
Finally, each novel carefully details a particular de-
piction of freedom, helping the reader to understand
what freedom means to each refugee character and how
the definition might differ from case to case. Across all
novels in our bibliography the freedom from fear of vio-
lence was paramount. Interestingly, in the three novels
we highlighted in depth in this article, the idea of the
freedom to testify, to give voice to the horrors faced in
the home country appeared in two: Red Midnight and
Before We Were Free. Because they were illegal, the char-
acters in Journey of the Sparrows were silenced.
Perhaps the most important finding from our explora-
tion of this topic in adolescent fiction, however, was the
simple lack of books depicting the refugee experience.
Further, not one of the titles we found is likely to be
discovered by most students in their own browsing. Al-
though we carefully included "in print" status as one of
our criteria, these novels were still somewhat challenging
to find in local and school libraries, despite the fact some
have been award recipients. Most certainly, none were
titles frequently checked out. Perhaps this is partially due
to the sometimes difficult subject matter that these nov-
els depict. Many refugees do suffer physical and mental
abuse, and their stories are not always happy ones.
Yet, we believe that contemporary fiction about the
refugee experience holds the potential to easily engage
adolescent readers and to open their eyes to a new per-
spective on their world and a greater understanding of
refugees in the United States today. Asking students to
read and discuss books of this nature will provide them
with an opportunity to see themselves in these books,
understand the experiences, hopes, and dreams of oth-
ers, and develop both understanding of and empathy
68
for people who are experiencing conditions in their
home countries that might necessitate their flight to
sanctuary. Talking about these stories with their peers
can push students to question their assumptions and
prejudices and can help them develop the habit of
looking beyond the surface to discover the stories of
themselves and others.
REFERENCES
Angel, A. (2003). The voices of cultural assimilation in current young
adult novels. Alan Review, 30(2), 52-55.
Britton, J. (1970). Language and learning. London: Penguin.
Cai, M. (1992). A balanced view of acculturation: Comments on Law-
rence Yep's three novels. Children's Literature in Education, 23(2),
107-118.
Galda, L, (1998). Mirrors and windows: Reading as transformation. In
T.E. Raphael and K.H. Au, Eds., Literature-basedinstruction:
Reshaping the curriculum. (pp 1-11). Norwood, MA: Christopher-
Gordon.
Galda, L. & Cullinan, B. (2006). Literatureand the child. (6t" ed.). Belmont,
CA: Thomson- Wadsworth.
Lamme, L. L., Fu, D., & Lowery, R. M. (2004). Immigrants as portrayed
in children's picture books. Social Studies, 95(3), 123-129.
Levy, M. M. (1999). Refugees and immigrants: The Southeast Asian ex-
perience as depicted in recent American children's books. The Lion
and the Unicorn, 23(2), 219-237.
CHILDREN'S BOOKS CITED
Alvarez, J. (2002). Before we were free. New York: Knopf.
Brown, J. (2004). Little cricket. New York: Hyperion.
Buss, F. L. (1991). Journey of the sparrows. New York: Dutton.
Danticat, E. (2002). Behind the mountains.New York: Scholastic.
Ho, M. (2003). Gathering the dew. New York: Orchard.
Mikalesen, B. (2002). Red midnight. New York: HarperCollins.
Naidoo, B. (2001). The other side of truth. New York: HarperCollins.
Placide, J. (2002). Fresh girl. New York: Wendy Lamb/Random House
Shea, P. D. (2003). Tangled threads: A Hmong girl's story. New York:
Clarion.
Veciana-Suarez, A. (2002). Flight to freedom. New York: Orchard.
Lauren Aimonette Liang is an assistant professor of reading
and literacy at the University of Utah. Her researchfocuses on
children'sand adolescent literatureand comprehension instruction,
and has been published in journals such as Reading Research
Quarterly, Research in the Teaching of English, and Reading
Psychology.
Lee Galda is a professor of children's and adolescent literatureat
the University of Minnesota. She has been Children's Books editor
for The Reading Teacher, served as a contributingeditorfor The
Riverbank Review, and was a member of the 2003 Newbery Award
Selection Committee. She writes extensively about children and their
literature,and the 7"' edition of her textbook, Literature and the
Child, coauthored with Lawrence Sipe and Bee Cullinan, has just
been published.
Beth Brendler is a doctoral student in Children's and Adolescent
Literaturein the Departmentof Curriculum and Instruction at the
University ofMinnesota. She is currentlyworking on her dissertation
on gender and response to literature.
Journal of Children's Literature v35 n2
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TITLE: The Refugee Experience in Books for Adolescents

SOURCE: J Child Lit 35 no2 Fall 2009

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