Showing posts with label refugees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label refugees. Show all posts

39% Off Discounts: Purchase Cheap Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman's Quest to Make a Difference Review

Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman's Quest to Make a Difference

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Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman's Quest to Make a Difference Review

As someone who once worked for a company where I had colleagues who were refugees of war-torn countries, this book was personally relevant. Just as in the book, I was told the most astounding and frightening tales of what people did to survive on a day-to-day basis and how they were ultimately forced to flee their homes for fear of their own lives and those of their families. It really made me think of how lucky I have always been to have never had to face anything remotely like what they'd gone through. I had the same feeling when I read this book and St. John delved into the stories of the Fugees players and what they had gone through before reaching the U.S.
Perhaps the saddest part of this book is the reality that greets these people when they reach the U.S. It was sobering to read about how they were settled in apartment complexes where they lived next door to drug dealers and gang members. It was sad to think that these people had escaped the devastation of their homes only to end up in a totally foreign culture in which they'd face a lot of the same dangers. 1
It was also disturbing to read about their treatment at the hands of the police and the long-time residents of the town. I don't think St. John was trying to paint these people out to be evil. Rather, he showed how human fears of that which is different and misunderstood can really tear at the fabric of a society. These people struggle with trying to find a way to deal with the influx of refugees into their town. Sometimes their solutions are brilliant, such as the story of the local grocery store, and sometimes they are just wrong, such as the Fugees inability to find a decent soccer field near their homes.
I was really struck by Luma, their coach, and how much she sacrificed in order to run her three soccer teams. The dedication of people like her and some of the other volunteers described in the book is really something to contemplate. She gave a lot of herself not only to get the team running but also to do what she could to ensure that her boys stayed in school and out of trouble. Her teams pretty much became her entire life rather than just a pastime. It's hard not to marvel at how heroic someone like this is because it makes the reader question if s/he would be as dedicated.
This book is a really important read. The face of the U.S. is definitely in a state of transition. This is and has always been a nation of immigrants but this book is timely when placed in the context of the arguments about illegal immigration that took place during the Bush administration. The big question, really, seems to be about immigration in general, both legal and illegal. In order to really make our country work, we have to find a way to live with our neighbors and to respect their customs. Even if you're not a fan of soccer (as in my case), this is still a book that will fascinate, amaze, and horrify you. What's more, you'll walk away with it with some new and valuable ways of looking at the U.S.

Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman's Quest to Make a Difference Overview



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40% Off Discounts: Lowest Price Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him Review

Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him

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Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him Review

Until Tuesday is much more than the feel-good story about service dogs I was expecting. Luis Carlos Montalván's book provides a brief but uncompromising look at the conduct of America's most recent military incursion into Iraq and the impact it had on soldiers who were placed in impossible positions. It also indicts businesses that discriminate against assistance dogs. None of that should put off dog lovers who want a feel-good story; Montalván's relationship with Tuesday, his golden retriever, is at the book's heart, and it is deeply moving.
The first three chapters imaginatively recreate Tuesday's training, including a look at Tuesday's life in prison while he participated in the Puppies Behind Bars program, bonding with an inmate and helping the inmate hold onto his humanity in an inhumane environment. Tuesday also put in time at Children's Village, where troubled kids learn about responsibility and success by helping to train service dogs.
The next five chapters tell Montalván's story. It mirrors writing that came out of the Vietnam War in its complaint that the nation's leaders lied to the public, neglected the troops, and did too little to help veterans.
Montalván -- a National Guard officer who had been in uniform for more than a decade -- arrived at Al-Waleed, Iraq, in 2003. While working to keep arms and insurgents from crossing into Iraq from Syria, Montalván was ambushed and barely escaped assassination. The severity of his injuries (both physical and psychological) wasn't immediately recognized -- in part because he refused the requests of medics who wanted him to go to Baghdad for x-rays. When he returned to Colorado in 2004, the "counseling" he received was brief and ineffective; he feared that requesting more would jeopardize his military career. Unable to adjust to a quiet life and faced with a failed marriage, he signed up for a second tour in Iraq and was assigned as a liaison officer to the Iraqi Special Forces. When the Iraqi Army started "a campaign of tribal and ethnic cleaning against the Sunnis" with the tacit support of the American Army, Montalván "could no longer understand what [his] men were fighting and dying for." He felt betrayed by leaders who turned their attention to "the media, the message, the public back home -- anything and everything, it seemed, but the soldiers under their command." After he wrote a critical op-ed that was published in The New York Times, he received an honorable discharge and returned home with PTSD: an umbrella diagnosis that encompassed his feelings of anxiety and paranoia, his withdrawal and isolation, his bitter days and sleepless nights.
The final sixteen chapters tell the story I was expecting and that dog lovers will recognize: a story of training and bonding, loving and learning. A dog and man with complementary personalities: codependent companions, mutual providers of support. Although Montalván tells a serious story, he also takes the time to describe Tuesday's playful antics, wonderful passages that made me laugh out loud. Even in those chapters, however, the war lurks. Some politically-minded readers might not appreciate Montalván's take on the Bush administration ... or, for that matter, his disappointment with the Obama administration. Montalván is a bright, emotionally honest man who isn't afraid to express a forceful point of view; it didn't bother me but it might anger some, so be warned. Not all of this book has a "feel good" quality.
Until Tuesday tells a personal story; it isn't filled with generalized facts about service dogs or PTSD. I can't say I learned anything new from it, but that might be because I once helped someone with a social anxiety disorder who can't leave his home without the calming influence of a service dog. He was experiencing the same discrimination that Montalván describes: restaurant managers, worried about violating health codes, mistakenly (and illegally) claim that a dog isn't really a service dog unless its owner is blind. I also live next door to a service dog that assists a woman in a wheelchair. Based on those experiences, and having a golden retriever of my own, I believed every word of Luis Carlos Montalván's account of how his relationship with Tuesday made it possible for him to reclaim his life -- despite the discrimination he encountered.
Tuesday reminded me so much of my own golden (particularly the description of Tuesday breaking training to dive into a swimming pool to steal the other dogs' toys) that I have no choice but to recommend this book. Fortunately, the book merits that recommendation; the story it tells may not be packed with fresh information, but it is memorable and moving and richly rewarding. I would give Until Tuesday 4 1/2 stars if that option were available.

Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him Overview

* Now a New York Times bestseller *

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