SuitabookRefugees
Catherine Stine
- Reading
- Consider reading alongside the young person rather than presenting the historical background as settled. Pause after major changes in each teenager’s circumstances, and discuss whose perspective is foregrounded and whose may be missing.
- Themes
- Finding home after displacement: Dawn leaves foster care for New York, while Johar flees Afghanistan for a camp in Pakistan; their communication helps each find a path towards home. The narrative presents displacement as dangerous and painful, but also gives connection a hopeful role in helping the teenagers move forward.
- Personal lives amid public tragedy: The novel places Dawn’s arrival in New York near 11 September 2001 alongside Johar’s experience of conflict and Taliban pressure in Afghanistan. The book connects individual lives with recent history, using the teenagers’ experiences to explore how large-scale events affect people personally.
- Connection across distance: Dawn and Johar exchange e-mails and phone calls, sharing secrets, fears and dreams despite living in different circumstances. The book presents this favourably.
- Worth knowing
- Be ready for material involving terrorism, war, a burned home, arrest, dangerous travel and the emotional effects of 11 September. These experiences may merit pauses, particularly for a reader sensitive to loss or upheaval.