The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer Viet Thanh Nguyen called on 17 fellow
refugee writers from across the globe to shed light on their experiences and the result is The
Displaced a powerful dispatch from the individual lives behind current headlines. Today the
world faces an enormous refugee crisis: 68.5 million people fleeing persecution and conflict
from Myanmar to South Sudan and Syria a figure worse than the flight of Jewish and other
Europeans during World War II and beyond anything the world has seen in this generation. Yet in
the United States United Kingdom and other countries with the means to welcome refugees
anti-immigration politics and fear seem poised to shut the door. Even for readers seeking to
help the sheer scale of the problem renders the experience of refugees hard to comprehend.
Viet Nguyen called "one of our great chroniclers of displacement" (Joyce Carol Oates The New
Yorker ) brings together writers originally from Mexico Bosnia Iran Afghanistan Soviet
Ukraine Hungary Chile Ethiopia and elsewhere to make their stories heard. They are
formidable in their own right-MacArthur Genius grant recipients National Book Award and
National Book Critics Circle Award finalists filmmakers speakers lawyers professors and
The New Yorker contributors-and they are all refugees many as children arriving in London and
Toronto Oklahoma and Minnesota South Africa and Germany. Their 17 contributions are as
diverse as their own lives have been and yet hold just as many themes in common. Reyna Grande
questions the line between "official" refugee and "illegal" immigrant chronicling the
disintegration of the family forced to leave her behind Fatima Bhutto visits Alejandro
Iñárritu's virtual reality border crossing installation "Flesh and Sand" Aleksandar Hemon
recounts a gay Bosnian's answer to his question "How did you get here?" Thi Bui offers two
uniquely striking graphic panels David Bezmozgis writes about uncovering new details about his
past and attending a hearing for a new refugee and Hmong writer Kao Kalia Yang recalls the
courage of children in a camp in Thailand. "There is no single refugee story and as the
editor of The Displaced a collection of refugee writers exploring and reflecting on their
experiences Viet Thanh Nguyen gives these stories room to breath and unfurl." - Millions
List of contributors: Joseph Azam David Bezmozgis Fatima Bhutto Thi Bui Ariel Dorfman Lev
Golinkin Reyna Grande Aleksandar Hemon Joseph Kertes Porochista Khakpour Marina Lewycka Maaza
Mengiste Dina Nayeri Vu Tran Novuyo Rosa Tshuma Kao Kalia Yang
