After the Last Border

January 20, 2020
Journalist Goudeau presents a richly detailed account of the resettlement experiences of two women granted refugee status in the U.S. Mu Naw fled Myanmar in 1989, at age five, and grew up in Thai refugee camps. She came to Austin, Tex., in 2007 with her husband and two young daughters, and Goudeau chronicles the family’s struggles with the language barrier, loneliness, and post-traumatic stress. Hasna al-Salam’s story begins in Daara, Syria, in 2011, when clashes between the Syrian Army and antigovernment protesters separated her from her adult children. Told by immigration authorities that her children could follow her through the family reunification process, Hasna made it to the U.S. in 2016. However, passage of the Trump administration’s travel ban scuttled those plans. Goudeau interweaves the stories of Mu Naw and Hasna with the history of refugee legislation in America, from the 1948 Displaced Persons Act to the 1980 Federal Refugee Resettlement Program and the raising of the refugee quota by President Obama just before the 2016 election. Her excellent interview skills and obvious empathy for her subjects make the family portraits utterly engrossing, and the history sections provide essential context. This moving and insightful dual portrait makes an impassioned case for humane immigration and refugee policy. Agent: Mackenzie Brady Watson, the Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency.

January 15, 2020
An Austin-based journalist and immigrant activist interweaves narratives of two refugees with a history of modern American refugee resettlement policies. World War II transformed the United States into a global leader in refugee resettlement. However, as former Catapult columnist Goudeau shows in her moving debut, the American dream has since become out of reach--both within and without U.S. borders--to immigrant asylum-seekers. Drawing on extensive interviews with two refugees she helped to resettle as well as historical research, the author draws attention to a resettlement problem that has reached crisis proportions. She centers the narrative on two women: Mu Naw, a member of a persecuted minority in Myanmar, and Hasna, a refugee from the Syrian civil war. Both were granted a chance to resettle in the U.S. in the first and second decades, respectively, of the 21st century, a time when the number of refugees globally had reached all-time highs but the number of refugees offered resettlement in the U.S. had reached historic lows. Yet because Mu Naw was Christian and Hasna was Muslim, the two had distinctly different experiences. Mu Naw faced the inevitable discrimination that came with immigrant status. Nevertheless, many white Americans offered the social and financial support that allowed her and her family to leave poverty behind and become middle class within the span of a decade. Hasna, who arrived in the U.S. just a few months before the election of Donald Trump in 2016, found herself facing a far more hostile atmosphere and uncertain future. Most of the people who helped her and her family were Syrian American. When American travel bans against Muslims, including Syrian refugees, went into effect in 2017, her hopes of reuniting the members of her war-fractured family faded. In a detailed text that moves smoothly around in time, Goudeau effectively humanizes the worldwide refugee crisis while calling much-needed attention to a badly broken American immigration system. Sharp, provocative, timely reading.

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February 1, 2020

Goudeau's work with a refugee resettlement agency in Texas informs her intimate portrait of two women whose families sought safety in the United States. By alternately focusing on the individual experiences of Mu Naw from Myanmar and Hasna from Syria, the author humanizes their departures from their homes, the complex and frightening refugee process they encountered, and their different experiences settling in Texas. Along with their stories, which span from roughly 2007-17, Goudeau intersperses several chapters describing a century of complex U.S. federal refugee policy that provide historical context. While Mu Naw and Hasna shared some characteristics, they starkly diverged in the situations they fled and, especially, in the timing of their entry into the U.S. Mu Naw found fewer impediments as a Christian from Myanmar, entering the U.S. in 2007 and quickly adapting to life in Texas. Escaping fierce violence in Syria in 2016, Hasna faced greater impediments than Mu Naw, including having family members impacted by Trump's travel ban affecting predominantly Muslim countries. VERDICT An excellent choice for readers seeking to understand the human effects of government immigration and refugee policy. Goudeau's sometimes heartbreaking narratives personalize the refugee crisis in ways cold news accounts cannot.--Charles K. Piehl, Minnesota State Univ., Mankato

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February 1, 2020
This book details how two refugee families, forced to flee from their respective homes in Myanmar and Syria, came to live in the U.S. Goudeau, a journalist who also works with refugee resettlement organizations in her hometown of Austin, based her profiles on over two years' worth of in-depth interviews. Her main sources were the matriarchs of each family: now self-sufficient, Mu Naw has established a secure home and profitable business and has become a leader among her fellow Christian refugees from Myanmar; grief-stricken Hasna, from Syria, is isolated and separated from her family due to evolving immigration policies. It's obvious that Goudeau was able to gain the two women's trust, resulting in compelling stories that offer intimate looks into their personal lives and uncover horrific details about what they've seen and experienced. Their histories emerge through alternating chapters broken up by excerpts that provide social and political background about American refugee resettlement from the nineteenth century to the present day. These profiles are sympathetic and ultimately profoundly moving.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)