Disturbed in Their Nests

September 15, 2018
A "lost boy" of Sudan and a California housewife forge a bond in this compelling dual memoir.Deng and Bernstein (co-authors: They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky: The Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan, 2005) met in San Diego just a few weeks before 9/11, brought together by the International Rescue Committee. They each experienced a process of acclimatization: Deng wrestled with what it meant to live in America, while Bernstein struggled with assumptions of her own. The book is written as a back-and-forth text, interspersing chapters in both voices to create a sense of conversation. It's an effective strategy that helps readers understand on a visceral level the gap between these two very different sensibilities and the accommodations required on every side. Bernstein, for her part, can be funny; early in the book, she describes a humorous scene in which her son, Cliff, introduced Deng and two fellow refugees to the soda machine at a fast food restaurant. It's a small moment, but it highlights a major issue: the difficulty of adapting, or moving, between two vastly different worlds. For Deng and his fellow refugees, America was the land of opportunity. "The poorest man in America is like the richest in Africa," he was told. Beset by parasites, trying to adjust to working in a supermarket, he was confounded at nearly every turn. For Bernstein, the challenges were different: to see and interact with Deng, on his own terms. "They needed an advocate," she writes. "A huge learning curve lay ahead for all of us." The narrative traces the arc of that collective shift. Although it occasionally gets bogged down in the detritus of daily life, it is an important reminder of all we share as human beings. "Being a refugee," Deng writes, "can feel like an invasion of another nation's economy, resources, culture and space....I understand those feelings because as a refugee I am a person whose own way of life was violated in my native land."This book represents the beginning--or a necessary reset--of an essential dialogue.

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September 15, 2018
When Deng boarded the airplane that would take him from a refugee camp in Kenya to America, he felt like a new and wonderful world awaited him. But the reality for 19-year-old Deng and his fellow Sudanese refugees as they adjusted to their new lives in San Diego soon stripped away any illusions that their difficult days were over. While Deng was no longer surviving on a handful of grain for meals, he faced a harrowing obstacle course of cultural, linguistic, and financial barriers as he worked to build a new life. When coauthor Bernstein met Deng as part of a program to show the new arrivals around, she quickly realized that a trip to the zoo was not at the top of their priority list and eventually decided there was more she could do to help. In a follow-up to their previous collaboration, They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky? (2005), Deng and Bernstein alternate telling the story of their mentoring relationship, narrating the same events from different perspectives, in an eye-opening and richly layered account.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)