A compelling memoir—"hilarious and heartbreaking" (The New York Times)—of two intertwined journeys: a Jewish refugee family in Ukraine fleeing persecution and a young man seeking to reclaim a shattered past
In the twilight of the Cold War (the late 1980s), nine-year old Lev Golinkin and his family cross the Soviet border, leaving Ukraine with only ten suitcases, $600, and the vague promise of help awaiting in Vienna. Years...

"I want life. For ten years, Achut Deng surrived at Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya after her family was ripped apart by the Second Sudanese Civil War. But Achut wanted to do more than merely survive. She wanted to live. The twenty-two-year civil war essentially orphaned over 20,000 children and drove them from their villages in southern Sudan. Some of these children walked over a thousand miles, through dangerous war zones and across unforgiving deserts....

"The Alkasem brothers, Riyad and Bashar, spend their childhood in Raqqa, the Syrian city that would later become the capital of ISIS. As a teenager in the 1980s, Riyad witnesses the devastating aftermath of the Hama massacre--an atrocity that the Hafez al-Assad regime commits upon its people. Wanting to expand his notion of government and justice, Riyad moves to the United States to study law, but his plans are derailed and he eventually falls in...

"Forced from his home by the Khmer Rouge, teenager Mae Taing struggles to endure years of backbreaking work, constant starvation, and ruthless cruelty from his captors--supposed freedom fighters who turned against their own people. Mae risks torture and death to escape into the dark tropical jungles, trekking across a relentless wilderness crawling with soldiers. This gripping and inspiring memoir, written with Mae's son, James, is not merely an incredible...

"In this searing memoir, Iran-born author Rahimeh Andalibian tells the story of her family: their struggle to survive the 1979 revolution, their move to California, and their attempts to acculturate in the face of teenage rebellion, murder, addiction, and new traditions. Andalibian struggles to make sense of two brutal crimes: a rape, solved by her father, and a murder, of which her beloved oldest brother stands accused. She takes us first into her...

"A mother-daughter memoir exploring loss, love, and healing, told in two alternating voices, from the critically acclaimed novelist and her teenage daughter"--

"Trip. My parents started using that word about a year ago--'one day, you'll take a trip to be with us. Like an adventure.' Javier's adventure is a three-thousand-mile journey from his small town in El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border. He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling alone except for a group of strangers...

A Chinese expatriate tells his story of escaping the hardship and repression of Mao's Cultural Revolution by joining the dissident underground, swimming miles across open water to Hong Kong, and eventually moving to the United States as a refugee. When Wong was a boy his father, a Chinese official in the customs office in Hong Kong, joined an insurrection at work and returned with the family to the newly established People's Republic of China. This...