The Lives of Immigrants and Refugees

Human beings have always migrated. To be on the move, searching for a more hospitable climate, greater resources, and a welcoming community, is part of our human DNA. All kinds of large, uncontrollable forces—war, the threat of genocide, climatic changes, political exile, and economic hardship—propel people to leave behind everything familiar and begin their lives over again in a strange place, sometimes with only the clothes on their backs.

The Lives of Immigrants and Refugees offers thirty-one essays by immigrants and refugees who now call Lincoln, Nebraska, home. These individuals have found support, belonging, and opportunity through the collaborative work of Lincoln’s New Americans Task Force members and the Lincoln/Lancaster County Welcoming and Belonging Strategic Plan. The stories in this book are brilliant, harrowing, poetic, and revelatory. They’re also stories of survival, resilience, creativity, and a staggering amount of work: learning a new language, navigating a challenging immigration system, being perceived as a foreigner, struggling to grasp strange new customs and traditions, working one’s way out of extreme poverty, working through trauma and grief. Those of us who have had the good fortune of not being displaced have much to learn by listening.