The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in America

by Helen Thorpe

From the award-winning author of Soldier Girls and Just Like Us, an “extraordinary” (The Denver Post) account of refugee teenagers at a Denver public high school and their compassionate teacher and “a reminder that in an era of nativism, some Americans are still breaking down walls and nurturing the seeds of the great American experiment” (The New York Times Book Review).

The Newcomers follows the lives of twenty-two immigrant teenagers throughout the course of the 2015-2016 school year as they land at South High School in Denver, Colorado. These newcomers, from fourteen to nineteen years old, come from nations convulsed by drought or famine or war. Many come directly from refugee camps, after experiencing dire forms of cataclysm. Some arrive alone, having left or lost every other member of their original family.

At the center of their story is Mr. Williams, their dedicated and endlessly resourceful teacher of English Language Acquisition. If Mr. Williams does his job right, the newcomers will leave his class at the end of the school year with basic English skills and new confidence, their foundation for becoming Americans and finding a place in their new home. Ultimately, “The Newcomers reads more like an anthropologist’s notebook than a work of Helen Thorpe not only observes, she chips in her two cents and participates. Like her, we’re moved and agitated by this story of refugee teenagers…Donald Trump’s gross slander of refugees and immigrants is countered on every page by the evidence of these students’ lives and characters” (Los Angeles Review of Books).

With the US at a political crossroads around questions of immigration, multiculturalism, and America’s role on the global stage, Thorpe presents a fresh and nuanced perspective. The Newcomers is “not only an intimate look at lives immigrant teens live, but it is a primer on the art and science of new language acquisition and a portrait of ongoing and emerging global horrors and the human fallout that arrives on our shores” (USA TODAY).

Genres: Nonfiction, Education, Book Club, Immigration, Audiobook, Social Justice, Teaching

432 pages, Paperback

First published November 14, 2017

About the author

Helen Thorpe is a journalist and the author of four books of narrative nonfiction. Malcolm Gladwell has said of her work, "Helen Thorpe has taken policy and turned it into literature."

JUST LIKE US (Scribner 2009) followed several DREAMers from adolescence into adulthood. It won the Colorado Book Award and was adapted for the stage. SOLDIER GIRLS (Scribner 2014) recounted the overseas deployments of three female veterans who served in the National Guard, and the challenges they faced on coming home. It was named Time Magazine's number one nonfiction book of the year, and the Boston Globe described it as "utterly absorbing, gorgeously written, and unforgettable." THE NEWCOMERS (2017) followed a classroom filled with refugee, asylum-seeking, and immigrant teens during their first year in America, as they learned English together in one ESL classroom. The New York Times Book Review called it "a delicate and heartbreaking mystery story."

FINDING MOTHERLAND (Must Read Books, 2020) is a self-published digital-only collection of personal essays. Thorpe writes about her parents decision to move to the United States, shares the stories of other immigrants in her neighborhood, and explores how Americans depend upon migrant workers to harvest local food. In the book's final essay, she asks why people who share her own ethnicity -- Irish-Americans -- are often hostile to or fearful of people whose backgrounds are different, and posits this is due to a misplaced "ethnostalgia" for a version of Ireland that no longer exists. The author attempts to facilitate deeper conversations about the intersections of socioeconomic standing, ethnicity, and legal status. Thorpe recorded the essays as an audiobook and released an ebook at the same time.

Born in London to Irish parents, Thorpe grew up as a legal resident of the United States, carrying a green card until she was 21. She is a veteran journalist who formerly worked as a staff writer (either directly on the payroll or via an annual contract) for The New York Observer, The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" section, and Texas Monthly. She has also produced a radio documentary that has aired on Soundprint. She lives in Denver, Colorado.

Reviews

[Kristy Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

On my daily commute I pass a beautiful, old high school. This is Denver South. Denver South High School is the magnet school for teenagers in the Denver Public School System who have limited or no English skills. This book takes place from August 2015 through the fall semester of 2016, and follows Mr. Williams, and his Newcomer Class. Over the first year 22 teenagers will find themselves in Mr. William's classroom. Almost all of them are refugees or asylum seekers. Many have experienced trauma that most people will never experience in their lifetime. Over the next year and a half these children will struggle to learn English as they learn a new city and transportation system, adjust to a new culture, and try to overcome their difficult pasts. All of this is set against the rise of Donald Trump.

I will be proselytizing for this book for a long, long time. I thought about these kids every morning and every evening as I passed their school. I thought about them when the Trump administration revoked the protected status of Salvadoran asylum seekers (two of the children are from El Salvador). I thought about them as the POS masquerading as the human President of the United States called many places "shit hole" countries. I thought about them tonight as the government shut down over Dreamers and the damn wall. The rage was physical at times. There were tears, and grinding of teeth. If I could hit every person in government over the head with this book until they read it I would. As it turns out, the more advanced students read another book that I think every member of Congress should read, Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

So read this book. Don't make me hit you over the head with it.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a teacher of English as a Foreign Language, both in the US and elsewhere, I found this excellent book hit close to home and was also a complete pleasure to read. There was a lot of nodding my head in recognition at the types of students in Mr. Williams’ Newcomers English and the bureaucratic and cultural struggles they and their families were going through as the election of Donald Trump went from joke to awful possibility to appalling reality.

I think the big problem this book might have is a marketing one, to wit, people in the teaching business or the refugee-helping business may feel that reading an accurate portrayal, however worthy and well-done, of the stressful and trying job they do all day is the last thing they want to read when they get home. The people who need to read this -- the people who don’t know anything about refugees and, in their ignorance, fear them -- won’t, because most people don't read things that seriously challenge their preconceptions. Maybe it’s an act of unwarranted optimism to believe that a mere book can change the mind of those who feel that foreigners are somehow less than human, but it's important to live in hope.

At one point, the author crosses pass with an admirable Evangelical Christian who has taken it upon himself to aid, as a volunteer, newly arrived refugees, She writes:

...we did agree on one central thing: that to live in comfort in the developed world and ignore the suffering of strangers who had survived catastrophe on the parts of the globe was to turn away from one’s own humanity.

...which pretty much says it all.

(Probably Much Too) Complete Disclosure: Thanks to Scribner for providing a free advance egalley copy for review via NetGalley. After I received it, I found out that, although I have never met the author, she was maid of honor at the second wedding of my wife’s best friend from high school, and also a former girlfriend of the husband of my real estate agent. I am not making this up. Also, my wife’s best friend from high school berated me for being a cheapskate and not supporting the maid of honor at her second marriage by paying money for the book in some form.

[Tucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

In “The Newcomers,” Helen Thorpe continues the remarkable and compassionate in-depth reporting present in her two previous books, “Just Like Us” and “Soldier Girls.” “The Newcomers” follows a group of teenage refugees at a Denver high school as they learn English, adapt to American culture, and build entirely new lives for themselves. These refugees are fleeing famine, persecution, war, and other horrific situations. Thorpe attends class with them for an entire school year and is drawn into their lives where she becomes both a friend and an advocate.

As absorbing as well-plotted fiction while also being extremely enlightening about the timely subject of immigration, “The Newcomers” is a book I highly recommended to ALL readers. (Bonus points should be awarded to public policy makers and TV talking heads who take time to read this book.)

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

[Lorna · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom is a remarkable and meticulous study and observation of twenty-two refugee students as they come together when they are enrolled in English Language Acquisition classes at Denver South High School, serving as a magnet school in the Denver metropolitan area. Helen Thorpe follows these immigrant students for a period of one year as they acclimate to their new surroundings. Ms. Thorpe undertook this project in 2015 amidst the backdrop of the candidacy, nomination and election of Donald Trump as president. As we witness the struggles of this refugee population, one of the most startling realities is the realization of the horrors that these young people had endured, some since small children. It goes without saying, that these experiences affected their acclimation as well as their learning. In addition to a full-time teacher and aide, there is also a psychologist in this ELA classroom. It is truly humbling to be part of this miraculous process.

"The school cultivated a mind-set, widely shared by faculty and students, that everybody under its roof was an asset. Native-born kids helped new arrivals learn English, even as foreign-born students helped their American peers become more global-minded."

"What took place inside his room always struck him as being close to a bona-fide miracle as he was likely to experience. If these students showed up every day, he believed, they would evolve and heal and adapt and flourish."

On South's diversity: "Both the wealthier families and the newly arrived refugee families cherished the experience of walking through the hallways filled with hijabs, neqabs, dreadlocks, head scarves, tracksuits, baseball hats, purple cheerleader uniforms, and a cacophony of languages."

[Jennifer Louden · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the scope of the story at times overwhelmed the writing and there was too much repetition of the classroom activity, this book still blew me away. To spend a year with these refugee kids, to experience the challenges of their lives, was life changing. I wish every member of Congress was required to spend a week in this classroom and in this school.

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 2.5 out of 5]

Helen Thorpe is an excellent writer of journalistic nonfiction, and always picks great topics for books, which is why I’ve read all of them. Unfortunately, the quality of her books seems to me inversely proportional to how much she features herself in them, and The Newcomers falls on the wrong end of that scale. But this book has an even more basic problem, in which Thorpe appears to have committed herself early to a particular premise and clung to it even as it proved increasingly infeasible and even inappropriate.

The premise is that Thorpe spent a year embedded in a Colorado high school classroom in which non-English-speaking students newly arrived in the U.S. learn the fundamentals of the language. Most of these students are refugees, hailing from various war-torn parts of the globe, from the Middle East to Africa, Southeast Asia to Central America. Teacher Eddie Williams generously agreed to host her, and Thorpe shows up eagerly to class, hoping to write about the lives of these kids and the circumstances that led them to flee their homelands.

And here’s where the problems start. First, Thorpe was determined to write a book about a group of people, who, by definition, don’t speak her language, and she doesn’t speak theirs. Second, those people are traumatized, confused teenagers, with traumatized or missing parents who understand life in the U.S. no better than their children do. Gradually the book turns into Thorpe pumping for information on the personal lives of people who don’t actually want to share. Even the teacher, her entry point, doesn’t want to go there, which doesn’t stop her from highlighting more than once that he refused to talk about the circumstances of his having a child outside wedlock. (Good grief, it’s the 21st century. This is probably the least interesting thing about him.)

Okay, she can do without the teacher’s inner life. But the students are no more forthcoming, and no wonder. Throughout the book, numerous older students and interpreters, former refugees themselves, advise Thorpe against prying into the kids’ lives: they’re new, they’re traumatized, they’re not ready to discuss their worst experiences with anyone – let alone, one presumes, the general public. But instead of changing the plan and focusing the book on people who were ready, she substitutes by speculating about the kids’ inner lives, or by recounting mundane classroom activities as if they were freighted with deeper meaning than seems evident to me. She notes that when Jakleen, an Iraqi girl who is one of the book’s more prominent characters, started and then stopped wearing a hijab, “I was not sure how to interpret this statement, and she never cared to enlighten me”; when Jakleen stops talking to a boy, it’s “for reasons that remained unclear.” When Methusella, a Congolese boy also prominently featured, makes a collage in group therapy, it’s “one of the few times [he] had revealed himself all year.”

He only actually revealed himself to the school therapist, but she hastened to pass on details of his work’s symbolism to the author, in one of many moments that made me question this story both in terms of consent and storytelling. All but one of the kids agreed to “participate” in her project (perhaps feeling it would have been rude or pointless to refuse, when she was in their classroom every day regardless), but none of them ever tell their stories fully, the way the subjects of Thorpe’s previous books did, leaving their experiences rather opaque. Which means the book loses out on including any more depth than what Thorpe was able to glean by following the teenagers around for awhile, and that most likely all this speculation about their emotions and histories was published without their first having the opportunity to withdraw consent. I’m sure many worthwhile nonfiction books have made their subjects uncomfortable, but it’s one thing to do that to an informed adult, another to an underage refugee with limited English proficiency.

And then there’s just so much of Thorpe in this book. She seems determined to convince readers how important her friendship is to these kids, and to the two families – Jakleen’s and Methusella’s – to whom she becomes a regular visitor. Unfortunately in her interactions with the teens she comes across as stiff and hopelessly middle-aged, and the focus on her own reactions takes away from informing the reader. For instance, when Methusella’s father endeavors to explain the situation in the DRC to her, she writes, “Then we got into an alphabet soup of armed groups . . . I got lost somewhere in the middle, amid the acronyms and all the tribal stuff. I could not absorb all the details, but I came away with the notion of a jumble of allegiances and betrayals, mixed with a lot of weaponry.” Look, lady, I don’t care about your experience of learning about Congolese history (which it seems like a good journalist would have researched before interviewing the family anyway). This is supposed to be a book about the refugees, not your memoir.

All that said, this book did engage me. It’s accessible and, especially as we get to know the families, the kids and their parents are very easy to empathize with. I enjoyed spending time with them and wanted the best for all of them. While there’s a ton of fiction and memoirs out there about refugee experiences, there’s much less popular nonfiction, so it’s a great idea for a book. And I learned a bit about the refugee resettlement process from it. The contrast between the Congolese family, which quickly seems to thrive in the U.S., and the Iraqi girls and their widowed mother, all of whom struggle quite a bit, is interesting and vivid. Thorpe’s brief trip to the DRC and meetings with Methusella’s friends and relatives there was a nice touch. But I suspect Thorpe would have produced a far better book if she’d regrouped and written about people willing and able to fully engage in the process, and kept herself out of it.


Edit: I suggest The Ungrateful Refugee for a far better book on this topic, and written by someone who has been a refugee herself!

[Jen Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m literally gasp-crying as quiet as I can on this Metro North train as this beautiful book comes to a close. That surprised me.

I've had the book for a few weeks now, reading a chapter here and there as I could, finding myself thinking about the people I was meeting within its pages. Like Thorpe's other books, there's a lot here to unpack, and I learned about what America is like for a newcomer, the realities of refugee policy before and after Trump, and where most refugees come from (hint: it's not the Middle East). But I also learned from the thoughtful way she shares her own process of writing the book and how it changes her. It's not just a story about teachers and students in a Denver classroom or about the current political climate - it's also a reflection on how to face the injustice of disparity of opportunity - how to understand it and how to change it. I'm inspired by the people whose lives are profiled in the book and by the author!

[gwen_is_ reading · Rating 5 out of 5]

Summary:
In Denver Colorado there is a special group of classes, ELA classes, given to the kids of new refugees.   Teens from all over the world, newly resettled into America from across the globe, come together to learn English, and get caught up in school- some of which have been out for some time.  Thorpe joined the class for a year, getting to know the teachers and students while also researching what each of these families went through before coming to America, and what they dealt with after.  This book takes place in 2015, around the time that Trump started his campaigning in earnest.  While families from Vietnam, Somalia, the DRC, El Salvador and many other areas were trying to acclimate to a very different life and learning how to move through a new society, racism is beginning to run rampant.  Students are worried- both the refugees and regular students.  It brings to light what each family went through, and how hard they work to become self reliant.
It also begs the question- what are we going to do?  Are we, as a country going to accept refugees- truly accept these people and work to help them?  Or do we close our boarders and our hearts?  Can we even make such a decision without knowing what they are going through- not just what they had to go through in their lives, but the trouble they have once here- learning English, getting jobs, racism and misunderstandings?
My thoughts:
I loved this book, but it broke me.  These are teens- children really- who have had their lives threatened.  Some had to hide from soldiers- or witnessed car bombs in their own neighborhood.  Some were born in refugee camps- one family went through the process of trying to get accepted for ten years.  We are talking about a 22 step vetting process in some instances.  So many of us, myself included, feel like we are knowledgeable about these issues- but I knew nothing about what these families went through- and very little about what help is available to refugees when they get here.  While the families stories were painful, and hard to handle; I found myself taking my time and pushing through.  I loved this book.  For me, this is a definite five star.  
The adult content scale is hard to be objective about here.  There is so much violence, so much pain, talk of (the threat of ) rape and death…. I would not feel comfortable giving this book to a teen.  Also, you have to think about the fact that in 2015, many of the refugees written about were teens- would I be ready for Juliet to read about someone her own age going through all this?  I don’t think I could, unless there was a lot of discussion time afterward.  I have to give this one an eight.  
I received an eARC of this book from Netgalley and Scribner Publishing for the price of an honest review.  Many thanks- I loved it so much that I preordered a hard-copy from Amazon and will receive it Tuesday.
The book comes out 11-14-17…. I cannot stress the importance of this book at this time, when refugees are so numerous, and their acceptance into new countries so uncertain.

[DeAnn · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars from me on this timely refugee book, well written, but could have been a bit shorter/edited in my opinion and I admit that non-fiction is harder for me to read.

This one has been on my radar for quite some time because Helen Thorpe is a local Denver author. It was recently picked by my local public radio station for their "book club" read. By the time my copy came in from the library, I missed the discussion, but still wanted to read this book. I'm going to hear the author speak next month.

The author spent 18 months with refugee students at South High School, located in southeast Denver, near the University of Denver campus. It was a fascinating journey as the students arrived with limited English skills and you can feel their frustration at not being able to communicate. Some are able to speak to each other as they know multiple languages, just not English. A few students had very few other students or paras to speak to -- one spoke Karen -- a language I had never heard of before. The teachers at South do an amazing job and Thorpe visits some of the families at home to learn more of their stories. Many endured horrible hardships, violence, and war in their home countries and the path to the US is very difficult. There is also an interesting window into the limited assistance refugee families can get here and how quickly they need to become self-sufficient. The soft heart in me wanted to help the families out financially.

During these 18 months, the presidential election is happening and when Trump is elected the harassment some of the students face is terrible. They are ridiculed and some were forced off mass transit because they are viewed as terrorists because they were wearing hijabs. I remember the news stories at the time and police officers had to ride buses for a while to keep everyone safe. I don't want to get too political, but it saddens me that some people in this country are so threatened by someone who follows a different religion or looks different. Somewhere I heard that the cure for racism is education and I think this is so true. For me -- education and reading widely would help so much!

[Sharon Orlopp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helen Thorpe is one of my favorite authors because she completely immerses herself in the subject matter. Thorpe's book, Just Like Me, involved immersion in the lives of four high school students. The Newcomers involved Thorpe becoming a part of the classroom with students from throughout the world.

My mom attended South High School in Denver and the high school is across from the University of Denver, where I graduated.

Immigrants and refugees and the challenges they face is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. It is an incredibly timely topic and Thorpe weaves perspectives of respect and inclusion throughout the book.

I greatly appreciated the historical lens that the book shared regarding each country's history but at times I struggled with the book because it felt like it bounced back and forth between the narrative arc of the students' stories and their home country's history.

[miriam · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank goodness that mess is over. The Newcomers was the worst book of 2019, so far. Considering this book got a lot of kudos from around the country, I’m shocked. It be like that sometimes though so time to start the review.

There were so many things wrong with this book, which I’m going to break down, bit by bit. But before I start, let me give a brief rundown of what the book is supposed to be about.

Here’s a paraphrased version of the official synopsis:

The Newcomers was described as a book written about a class of immigrant teens who were in an English Language Acquisition at South High School (DPS) during the 2015-16 school year. In the center of the story is the teacher of this class, Mr. Williams, and his great efforts to teach the class and help them get basic English skills and move up a class by the end of the year.

Let’s ~debunk~ this synopsis!

DURING THE 2015-16 SCHOOL YEAR
Part of this book extends to the summer before the 2016-17 school year and almost completely unrelated to the kids. The author goes to the Congo and learns about rebels. The only remotely related part is the brief section in which she meets the family of one student, upsetting his cousin in the process. This section takes 7% of the book. Following this, the book extends into the fall of the following school year, taking up a little under 20% of the book. A good percentage of this book is not even focused on the school year itself, thus extending the book unnecessarily.


IN THE CENTER OF THE STORY IS THE TEACHER OF THIS CLASS, MR. WILLIAMS
Mr. Williams is disregarded for the majority of the story, as a lot of the book is set at the homes of the students in the ELA class. There’s a brief chapter that tells a bit of his backstory, but it’s quickly disregarded after. Then around 88% into the book, during the fall of the next year, the class the author follows is not his class, but those from the ELA class that moved up to a higher level class. His class is only mentioned a handful of times from that point on, despite his class being considered the "center" of the story.

The rest of the synopsis is accurate enough, so let’s move on to why the book is problematic, using QUOTES.


PSYCHOANALYSIS

...there were indications that the girls might be experiencing inner turmoil… while both [sisters] had come to school with their heads uncovered, within a short time Jakleen began wearing a hijab, while Mariam did not… he [Mr. Williams] imagined the two sisters might be struggling with questions of identity and belonging.

Helen Thorpe (HT) is an author. Mr. Williams is a teacher. What makes either of them qualified to try and question their behavior? They should focus on telling a story and educating them rather than what they wear and don’t wear, because it ISN’T THEIR BUSINESS.


PRYING
I’m going to rant before quoting. So during this book, Thorpe went to the homes of many of the students and interviewed the parents as a family and somewhat inserted herself into their personal lives. This involved going to court with the parents, students and eating food with them. At one point she even went into the bedroom of one family observing their items:

On top of the antique dresser with the mirror they had grouped five bottles of perfume, three bottles of dark brown hair dye, one bottle of foundation, one tube of mascara, one tube of lip gloss, one box of eye shadow, and two hairbrushes. A perfume called Sweet Sensation came in a round pale pink glass bottle, and it had been placed in the very middle of the arrangement, like a centerpiece… In their closet, there were eighteen hangers… the girls had three jackets, two sweaters, six pairs of trousers, and half a dozen tops.

Seems really long and unneeded, right? Exactly. While I would love to know more about their lives, this is not what I needed or asked for. It’s very invasive and super creepy. While Thorpe claimed that she wouldn’t interview any student that didn’t want to be, the language gap likely made it easier for her to force answers out of the students/family. She often pried as well, digging into sensitive topics. A student had been injured in a car accident while her mother was driving, and a whole section of the book is devoted to the mom’s guilt and the daughter’s amnesia, and it was horrible to read. I hated every bit of that section, and HT had no benefit from recording such distress like that.


SELF CENTERED AUTHOR
Why did I learn so much more about the author than some of the students in the book? You may think I’m joking, but here’s a completely unneeded section of the story where random kids, not even main characters, ask the author questions. This is their one appearance, and it’s completely separate from the main plot of the story.

...[I] asked if the students had questions for me.
“Would you rather be an egg roll or a spring roll?” Keegan asked.
“Oh! I said. A spring roll.”
[...]
“Are you a John Cena fan?”
“I have to confess I have no idea who that is, but I’m excited that I’m about to learn.”
… (I am not a John Cena fan but admit a grudging admiration for certain rhymes, such as, “I got my soul straight, I brush your mouth like Colgate.”)
“Do you have a spirit animal?” Keegan asked.
“Yes, I actually went through an official exercise to figure that out, and I discovered it’s a red fox,” I said.

WHY ON EARTH WOULD I NEED THIS INFORMATION FROM A BOOK THAT’S SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT IMMIGRANT TEENAGERS?! WHY DO I CARE ABOUT THIS? I DIDN’T READ THIS BOOK FOR HER BUT FOR LEARNING MORE ABOUT THE KIDS. SHE TRIES TO MAKE HERSELF SEEM LIKE SUCH A GREAT PERSON BUT SHE JUST ACTS HIGH AND AND MIGHTY, WHICH LEADS ME TO:


HIGH AND MIGHTY
Context: HT is eating with a student’s family.

The food was hearty and simple and I enjoyed it immensely. I simultaneously felt guilty about a meal bought with food stamps, but I was raised by people who consider it an important mark of hospitality to share food.

Okay? Why do I care about how you were raised? Do you think this is going to make me like you more or something wack like that? Because it didn’t. I just hated how you acted like you were doing the family a favor. Then she acts judgmental to the family a little later.


JUDGY
Context: This is when she’s looking in the closet of the sisters. She found a bunch of high heels that belonged to Mariam, one of the students.

Catching sight of the vampy collection of heels was unexpected, because Mariam came to school every day looking like a librarian, with her hair in a long braid, wearing glasses and big cardigans. She seemed too straitlaced to possess such a daring shoe collection. After I saw what they had to work with, which was pretty meager, I was triply impressed by the way the girls always looked so pulled together.

Sis. No. Why do we need this information? Your opinion and perspective are unneeded, unwanted, and unimportant. It just detracts from the story itself and adds to the length of the book. Instances like this happen a lot in the book.


CREEPY
Context: A new student pointed out to the higher level ELA teacher, Ms. Hijazi, that the upcoming Friday would be an ideal day to take off.

Ms. Hikazi swung around to stare, rather imperiously, at the brand-new, terribly good-looking Syrian.

Why are you describing a high school student, who's very young, as “good-looking?” That’s creepy, especially considering HT would have been 53 at the time this book was written. Also, what does this have to do with the classroom or the plot in any way?


Also, without quotes… the writing was all over the place. She literally wrote “thumb’s up” in one section. The thumb is up? The thumb has up? I don’t get it. The book would jump from school to a student’s home constantly and it was infuriating and confusing. There were too many commas in some places and places with too few in others (see some of my quotes above).

The funny part is, the election fell during the timeline of this book, and she only mentions it to show how woke she is, or how woke South is, or how it scares the immigrant students. It’s supposed to be a big deal but she really only mentions events from the election a few times.

Overall, that was a disappointing read and I’m sad I wasted like 15 hours of my life on it. Peace 🤡✌🏾

[Amber Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom is a journalistic investigation that follows a group of students from being shy, noncommunicative newcomers to interactive, engaged, and mostly happy students. The study, conducted by well-known author Helen Thorpe, explores how difficult and harrowing life is for refugee students and the numerous challenges they face as they adapt to life in the United States. The inspiring book delves not only into student backgrounds, challenges, and family problems but also explores the desperate need for well trained, experienced ELL professionals and knowledgeable, open-minded administrators in order to create an environment that foster refugee student success. Refugee students face an increasing amount of discourse due to the turbulent political landscape made by Trump’s Foreign Policies reinforcing the need for education, advocacy, and support on behalf of these students and for the population in general. It gives even the most uninformed educators an intimate glimpse of the life refugee students face, and the important role school plays. I highly recommend it to all educators, administrators, and people interested in the refugee world.

[Heather]

I've often wondered what it would be like to move to the U.S. from a non-English speaking country and have to learn to survive here.  This is a book that answers those questions.  I think this should be required reading for anyone who wants to talk intelligently about the immigration debate in the U.S.  

The author spends 18 months with a group of teenagers who are in a Newcomers class in a Denver high school.  All of them are recent immigrants and have tested at the bottom level of English language proficiency.  They represent most of the major conflict zones on the planet - The Democratic Republic of Congo, Syria, Iraq, Burma, Central America, Eritrea.  The school year starts with learning how to introduce yourself in English.  Most of the kids are stumped.

One of the things I found interesting in this book was the transparency of the author's process.  She is writing about minors who have all experienced a great deal of upheaval and trauma in their lives.  She explains how she approaches the kids with a translator in their home language to ask if she can include their stories in the book.  There are kids who say no at this point and she respects that.  If they agreed, she sent home a letter written in their language to their parents that requested permission to interview the children and requested to interview them.  If permission is given, then home visits are started with an interpreter.  In spite of all these precautions, there are still communication errors and just the plain inability of an American to truly understand the lives that refugees have led.  She discusses her thought process about what questions to ask about their backgrounds.  When does reporting the story just become an excuse to pry into things for the sake of the sensational details?  She talks about when she chose to walk away from lines of questioning that are relevant to the story but would lead to retraumatizing the people being interviewed.

For the families that agreed to participate, it opens a window in to the lives in war zones.  Hearing what they had to endure before fleeing their homes was heartbreaking.  There are Iraqis who worked with the U.S. Army and then were left behind.  A Central American female police officer was targeted for murder after arresting gang members and when they couldn't get to her they starting threatening her children.  A family with 10 children had to walk out of the DRC to avoid repeated violence.  Some of the kids were born in refugee camps.  Most are already multi-lingual.

Life in the U.S. isn't easy.  Resettlement agencies help but families are required to be self-supporting within 4 months of arrival.  That's hard when you don't speak the language and can't get a good job.  I'm surprised how many families did it.  Other families' stories show how one small setback can upset their whole resettlement journey. 

The importance of this story is underscored by the fact that it takes place from September 2015 to December 2016.  Reading about the rise of Donald Trump as it relates to these families was stressful all over again.  Incidents of racism rise on public transport as the election takes place.  Court cases to receive asylum for Central American children are suddenly in doubt.  Family members scheduled to arrive from Somalia are suddenly turned back at the airport.  

The author does go to the DRC to see where the family that she knew from Denver came from.  She traces their route to refugee camp and meets friends and family members who have been left behind.

This is an ultimately hopeful book as you see how far the kids come in 18 months.  Some go from silent observers on day 1 to being a part of the student government a year later.  Others are still struggling with English but are able to have full conversations.  No one who reads about these families would think they are lazy and trying to work the system.  This is a book I'd love to force all Trump fans to listen to in order to see if these people's realities align with their idea of what immigrants are.  

 This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story

[Shauni · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Fear is the only true enemy, born of ignorance and the parent of anger and hate."--Edward Albert

If you want to know what it's like to teach ESL, read this book. Of course, my job is even more fun because I teach adults instead of teenagers. I especially love this book since it was written recently and not too far away (Denver), and the classroom has very similar demographics to mine. My students are at beginning/intermediate English levels, and so I don't usually get detailed information about where they're from or how they got here. This author hired translators to get the background stories of the students, which were very interesting, and she spent a fair amount of time in their homes getting to know them. She even visited a refugee camp in the Congo, and wrote about her experiences there. This type of book naturally appeals to people like me, who work with immigrants and refugees, but I really wish people who are afraid of refugees (and vote accordingly) would read it.

[Pat · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful testament to public education, committed teachers and the resiliency and determination of immigrant families! In a classroom at South High in Denver, Helen Thorpe has found a microcosm of the refugee crisis, and she gently uncovers it student by student. Without preaching, she shines her light at trouble spots around the world and at our collective record of letting their people down. The stories of these teens convey a triumph of the human spirit, even though it’s clear some of the students will falter. Thorpe did a wonderful job of bringing a diverse and changing group of students to life. Despite the severe struggles each of these disparate kids faced with language, culture, economics and more, ultimately, the title had it exactly right: This was a story of refuge, friendship and hope, of strangers in a strange land finding their way in America. Important reading.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author spoke at my workplace recently and the book became even more powerful and life changing; how does one get a book nominated for the Nobel or Pulitzer, because that is needed, please.

Please read this book.

This story needed to be written, and the narrative nonfiction style is one of my favorite, since it creates a story that feels immediate and reminds us what it means to be human. She has been devoting her time the past year or so with talking about the book, and while many of us who work with refugees every day knew a lot of the backgrounds of certain groups, we still walked away with new information, and that is testimony to meticulous observation and being able to establish trust and warmth. Refugee and immigrant teenagers are one of our most inscrutable populations, and while after 10 years, I have found a way to communicate diabetes to adults from all over the globe, and pregnancy care, I have not been able to connect with the teenagers in a meaningful way. This book described my working life in so many ways, and allowed me an intimate glimpse into their minds, hearts and families.

I have always felt like my work touches the heartbeat or pulse of the planet, and this author captured so much of what we do, albeit in a different setting.

Some of the language barriers:

“English contains roughly a quarter of a million words, and most native speakers of the language deploy about ten thousand of them. During the preproduction phase of language acquisition, which could last for three to six months, ELA students might acquire perhaps five hundred words.”
“He thought Hsar Htoo’s difficulty was due largely to the fact that the Sino- Tibetan languages are about as far as you can get from English. Like most Asian languages, Karen and Karenni are tonal, which meant that Hsar Htoo and Kaee Reh were accustomed to deciphering the meaning and significance of words based on whether their sounds rise or fall. To further complicate matters, in the Sino- Tibetan languages, verbs do not change their endings. Tense, person, and number are expressed by adding other words, or are left to be inferred. Instead of conjugating a verb in Karen or Karenni, you simply add a word like “tomorrow” or “yesterday.”

“Most African languages contain a high number of loanwords from Arabic, due to the extent to which Arab people served as merchants across that continent. English doesn’t have many loanwords that came directly from Arabic, but it does have a significant number that arrived through Spanish. Some of the many words that are identical or similar in all three languages are alcohol, elixir, giraffe, lemon, safari, and talisman.”

A life that was only led in a refugee camp in Thailand, similar to the Bhutanese in Nepal:

“And he had offered the teacher a huge, incandescent smile, giving Mr. Williams a glimpse of a sunny disposition. The majority of the Karen people came from the mountains or the river deltas of Burma, but they had been subjected to such extreme forms of persecution by the Burmese military— bombs, land mines, rapes, beheadings, indiscriminate butchering, the burning of entire villages down to the ground— that they had vanished in huge numbers over the mountain peaks and down into neighboring Thailand. That country treated them like illegal immigrants and held them inside enclosures that functioned like prison camps. Many Karen families had lived in the camps for so long that their children or grandchildren had been born in them. Mr. Williams wondered whether that might be true for Hsar Htoo, given the way he had introduced himself as being from Thailand. If so, everything here would be new— running water, appliances, grocery stores, snow, freedom.”

The holy work of the teacher: ”Constant encouragement— that was how he shepherded the foreign speakers toward the second phase of language acquisition, which was called “early production.” He sprinkled praise in the direction he wanted the students to go, as if he were putting down breadcrumbs to mark the path forward.

“Where others might see students with limitations, or students who were lagging behind their peers, Mr. Williams saw a room filled with kids who had lived through titanic experiences, teenagers who could do anything at all, once they accepted whatever sort of history they had brought with them and grasped the full extent of the opportunity lying ahead. He often told me that he felt lucky to work in a room like this one— a room that spoke of just how big the world was, and how mysterious. Meanwhile, I started visiting some of his students at home, and that was when I began to appreciate more fully how illuminating Room 142 was going to be, for the room quickly began to serve as an almost perfect microcosm of the global refugee crisis as a whole. Once I began meeting with particular families, I started hearing about every kind of journey a refugee family could survive. The stories that intersected in this one classroom brought to life the global crisis in a way that I never saw represented in the daily papers. The kids were at South to learn English, but in the process they were sharing with me and with the school’s staff and with their American- born peers all kinds of lessons— about fortitude, about resilience, about holding on to one’s humanity through experiences nobody should have to witness. About starting over, and about transformation.”

“Just the daily experience of walking down the halls proved liberating. Young women from Africa came to school wearing floor- length skirts in bright orange or hot pink, with contrasting head scarves in electric blue. Their counterparts from Southeast Asia showed up wearing hijabs adorned with sequins. Young men from Southeast Asia sometimes wore stripes of yellow paint on their cheeks as a form of blessing. Female students from the Middle East did their hair in elaborate updos and then draped wool scarves over their big coiffures, but wore jeans and American T- shirts. One day, I saw an Iraqi student wearing a black head scarf and a gray T- shirt that said I KNOW THAT GUAC IS EXTRA. You could be anything at all and register as gorgeous— you knew this, if you walked the hallways of this school. It was a place that eroded prejudices and expanded ideas of beauty.”

Other barriers to learning:
“Miss Pauline had explained to Mr. Williams that students still coping with traumatic events were likely to have increased activity in the amygdala. At the same time, there was typically decreased activity in those parts of the frontal lobe where learning takes place. Mr. Williams could go over and over a given lesson, but if a student was in a triggered state, he or she might not learn readily, no matter how good the teacher was.
““One could take any of the well- rounded, assured students who served on the Senate and put them into a similar predicament— bomb their home city until it became unlivable, separate some of them from their parents, force them to witness atrocities, starve them for a while, transport them to a foreign country where they understood nothing, give them a teacher who spoke a language they could not comprehend— and most of them, too, would have fallen quiet.”
“Why had our bus driver abandoned us? Was he hungry? Did he have to take a piss? Had he always wanted to walk off the job like this, leaving behind a bus full of passengers voicing questions about his whereabouts? Solomon and Methusella silently took in the hullabaloo. The expressions on their faces remained accepting, alert, and watchful. The only question on their minds appeared to be whether they faced danger. Their response to the situation differed from that of the nonimmigrant passengers, who had gone straight to anger and defiance, because they felt entitled."

Family dynamics that affect learning:

“I sensed that perhaps I had made a mistake. What I would learn eventually is that the tribalism of Africa is subtle, complex, and nearly unfathomable to outsiders. Customs are closely held and generally not written down. Some of the old ways might even go unspoken, or might be passed along from parent to child only at key life moments, a precious gift to be handed over at just the right juncture. Each tribe has specific habits around what to eat, or which animals to hold in high regard, some of which might sound outlandish in Europe or the United States. A few customs sounded outlandish even to me, but the basic concept underpinning tribalism was highly familiar.”
“Later her adoptive mother, Martha, said she believed that the extremity of life inside a refugee camp affected families by amplifying their basic dynamics. Strong families grew stronger, dysfunctional families slipped into worse dysfunction.”

Reality
“Troy liked to describe himself as “the realist.” Refugee resettlement work attracted idealists who wanted to make the world a better place, but the job of a case manager was to be unabashedly pragmatic, as Troy saw it. You had to make a refugee’s dreams conform to the day- to- day reality of living in the United States, at the bottommost rung of the socioeconomic ladder. Prospective employers might be reluctant to hire people who spoke foreign languages, and the skills that refugees arrived with sometimes had no utility in the developed world. The streets of America were paved, but just with tarmac. You had to break it to the refugees gently, but they had to get the point, fast: They must surrender the vain illusion that from this point forward everything would be easy. Not at all. Everything was going to be brutally hard. It would be tough to find a decent place to live that they could afford; it would be difficult to find any kind of job, let alone one they might enjoy; learning English would be mind- bogglingly frustrating. Plus, nobody in this country would understand their story. They would feel so unrecognized, they might as well have become ghosts.”
“Tracy Kidder’s Strength in What Remains, a book about a survivor of one of the major genocides in Burundi, when I came across a passage about cultural beliefs in Central Africa around discussing difficulty. “Keep it in the kitchen” was one of the admonitions that Kidder cited. Another could be used against a person who said too much: “You talk like you were raised by a widow.” When I read these sayings, I thought of the incredible reserve of Solomon and Methusella’s family. I felt that I had a duty to tell their story, but for the time being I relinquished the idea of sitting down at their table and eating their food and saying, Great! Tell me about your nightmares!”

“…could hear all three of them saying the word kitab. What was that? “Book!” Shani told me. “My language, their language, same.” The word for “book” was virtually identical in each of their home languages. In Arabic, it was kitab; in Tajik, kitob. In Turkish, it was kitap, Jakleen pointed out, and in Farsi, Shani hastened to add, the word was kitab, just like Arabic. Initially, I thought this kind of convergence existed only in the Middle East, but as I spent more time with students from Africa, I came to realize I was wrong. Dilli told me that in Kunama, the word for “book” was kitaba, and Methusella said in Swahili it was kitabu. That was the moment when I finally grasped my own arrogance as an English speaker. I mean, the arrogance harbored by someone who knew only European languages, which rendered the well- laced interconnectedness of the rest of the world invisible. I was starting to see it, though— the centuries- old ties that bound Africa and the Middle East, born of hundreds of years of trade and travel and conquest and marriage. Once the students grasped that I would exclaim with delight if they found a word that had moved through many of their countries, they started flocking to me to share loanwords and cognates. More than one- third of Swahili comes from Arabic, meaning the links between those two languages are as powerful as those between English and Spanish. But it was also possible to chart the reach of Arabic across the entire African continent, into Kunama and Tigrinya as well.

As the kids discovered these commonalities, I began to feel as though I were watching something like the living embodiment of a linguistic tree. The classroom and the relationships forming inside of it were an almost a perfect map of language proximity around the globe. Generally, students chose to communicate most with others whose home languages shared large numbers of cognates with their own, which meant their first friendships often developed along the same lines as language groupings. As this took place around me, I grew to see my own position on the world’s tree of languages more clearly. English speakers can easily grasp the vast coterminology of all the Indo- European languages— our own limb of the global tree— but we are generally deaf and dumb to the equally large influence of Arabic, Chinese, or Hindi across parts of the globe where English does not dominate. We cannot hear or see the tremendous coterminology that has resulted among various other language families, such as between Arabic and the African languages. It was to our detriment, not understanding how tightly interconnected other parts of the world are. When we make enemies in the Middle East, for example, we alienate whole swaths of Africa, too— often without knowing.

I left South thinking that qalb and heart were one and the same. I used one word to refer to a muscle in my body and the concept of falling in love and the idea of what it takes to raise a family or to teach an entire classroom full of teenagers from around the world, and the students from the Middle East would use one single word for all of that, too. Qalb and heart seemed identical. Then I looked up qalb on Google Translate one weekend, while the kids were missing me and I was missing the kids. When I asked Google to change “heart” into Arabic, it gave qalb, as expected. But when I asked Google to switch qalb into English, I got heart, center, middle, transformation, conscience, core, marrow, pith, pulp, gist, essence, quintessence, topple, alter, flip, tip, overturn, reversal, overthrow, capsize, whimsical, capricious, convert, change, counterfeit. In addition, the word meant: substance, being, pluck. I am in love with this word, I thought. What is all this movement about? My own concept of heart did not include flip, capsize, or reverse. Our two cultures did not have the same idea of what was happening at the core of our beings. There was something reified and stolid about my sense of heart, whereas the idea of heart that these kids possessed appeared to have a lighter, more nimble quality. Whatever it was, qalb seemed more fluid and less constrained than anything I had imagined happening inside of me.”

“The world was offering us its refugees, due to wars we started ourselves, conflicts we helped to fund, violence we had tacitly condoned, or fights in which we had played no part. Did we want to say a casual no thanks? Was that how we wanted to live, while we had our spate of time on this earth? And if we did choose to live that way, closed- minded and hard- hearted, then what was going on with our qalb?”

“I would even say that spending a year in Room 142 had allowed me to witness something as close to holy as I’ve seen take place between human beings. I could only wish that in time, more people would be able to look past their fear of the stranger and experience the wonder of getting to know people from other parts of the globe. For as far as I could tell, the world was not going to stop producing refugees. The plain, irreducible fact of good people being made nomad by the millions through all the kinds of horror this world could produce seemed likely to prove the central moral challenge of our times. How did we want to meet that challenge? We could fill our hearts with fear or with hope. And the choice would affect more than just our own dispositions, for in choosing which seeds to sow, we would dictate the type of harvest. Surely the only harvest worth cultivating was the one Mr. Williams had been seeking: greater fluency, better understanding.”

[caroline anhalt]

This is the sort of book that ignites a fire under you, inspiring you to do something productive, selfless and good. These stories are real and so enlightening - about families seeking asylum in America only to be thrown into a complicated bureaucracy and a judgmental cultural climate. This was so much more than I thought it would be. What a read!

[Farrah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, which offered a window into the travails of being a teenage newcomer in America. The fact that it was set at a nearby high school in Denver made it fun too.

[Evan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let me preface this by saying that I also teach English to speakers of other languages. I should also say that I'm writing this review several months after finishing the book.

The Newcomers was okay, but it didn't teach me anything new. It seemed more like a performative way to *prove* refugees "aren't all bad." The book exploits the children's trauma and is constantly highlighting their otherness ("oh that's so different from what I'm used to" is a pretty common thread). At the same time, Thorpe tries hard to say the kids are "just like us." It's paradoxical but Thorpe somehow manages to emphasize both their differences and their sameness.

Thorpe ties the children's stories to her own Irish-American upbringing about half a century ago, but her struggles-- though valid-- are incomparable to what these children face. She came to the US already knowing English, and she came at such a young age that the US is the only country she really knows. The brief discussion of how Irish immigrants were treated was fairly interesting, I guess. I'm not saying one struggle is harder than the other, they're just very different situations. I wish the author had talked less about herself and focused more on Mr. Williams and the children.

I appreciate that Thorpe took the time to talk to the children directly, and did not force anyone to participate. I also appreciate that she tried to integrate herself into the classroom and the children's lives, providing assistance when needed and when possible. Some of the children's struggles are simply the struggles of people in poverty in the US, some of their struggles are specific to their backgrounds.

After reading The Newcomers, I was annoyed Thorpe chose this particular image as the cover. The girl (I can't remember her name anymore) only wore her hair covered for a short period of time, so it seems misleading to display this picture of her. Considering the comments Trump was making about Muslims at the time of publishing, it seems like she used the image for shock value. She effectively confirmed what many Americans (not just islamophobes, trust me) already believe: Muslims come from other countries (i.e. they are not and cannot be American) and if they cover their hair, it must be because they haven't adjusted to American culture yet. The girl's story, and her reason for wearing, then removing her scarf if interesting, but it's not the main idea of the book. I would have preferred a cover image with the children in the background placed front and center.

All in all, the book is worth the read simply because it provides another perspective of American life. It's also helpful for TESOL and ELA teachers, because they can glean some ideas from it. I would not, however, deem this book the end-all, be-all. It should be treated as one of many perspectives.

[Megan Moss · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book about Helen Thorpe’s year of observing South High School in Denver. South welcomes Refugee teenagers every year and Thorpe sits in on the Newcomer class, a class full of a dozen or so refugee teenagers that have just arrived to the US.

What I loved:
-Helen Thorpe is a great writer. She’s descriptive and makes it feel like you are there with her observing. She is an investigative journalist and she writes with a tone that is both neutral and respectful. I liked that she wasn’t preachy or trying to tell you how to feel—I think there is a lot of beauty in being told about a situation and then having to figure out what to make of it.
Her tone/style reminded me a little bit of the approach in “Upstairs at the White House,” which I also loved.

-I loved how the Refugees were shown as people that had their ups and downs, character flaws, and little quirks. I felt like I got to know them and I walked away understanding more thoroughly what it may be like to be in their situation.

—I loved how Thorpe gave great context for the situation in the various countries the Refugees were from. She did this in a way that I think was the most respectful: she interviewed or read other primary sources besides the Refugees. She also travels Tito the Congo to see life first hand. She had compelling evidence that the social/political context of these war-torn counties was too much to discuss for these teenagers and their families, or just too taboo to discuss. I appreciated how she was culturally sensitive to the needs of the book subjects.

—While Thorpe doesn’t push her beliefs on you, as mentioned before, she does occasionally share the opinion she’s come to. I loved what she says about the need for having Refugees enter our country. It goes beyond a “it’s just the right thing to do” to “we benefit by getting to know and interact with these incredible people that have overcome and seen so much.” There is something more humble and inspiring to me when we recognize that we are the ones that benefit by getting to know people from all over the world, especially those fleeing from the most horrific situations. I think it’s the difference between surface-level tolerance and love. I love how this book made me think of that.

—this was book heavy and thoughtful but also inspiring and engaging. I like it realistically portrays the hardships of Refugee life her in the US., and makes me want to do more to help and open our borders.

—I am so inspired by the Teachers and case workers mentioned in this book. But it made me want to think about how we could have better systems in place, not just exceptional people.

[Joann Calabrese · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had mixed feelings about this book. I live in Denver and found that part particularly interesting. I also understand that Thorpe has tried to sensitize people to the overwhelming difficulties of refugees in this country, with her focus on one classroom of teenagers. However, it felt at times that she was lacking in sensitivity. Sometimes it was hard to read her descriptions of how she pestered people for their stories . She talked about trauma, but I don't think she understands it. It's also concerning that she only changed four people's names in the book. Apparently, others gave her permission to use their names. They are all newcomers who possibly don't understand the possible repercussions. She lives here and knows what's happening, and it seems like she could have made a decision to change all the names for their protection as they move forward with their lives.

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone with opinions on immigration or the movement of refugees should read this book; the humanity brought to life is so moving. It's very easy for Americans to just point fingers at the rest of the world and forget just how involved and responsible WE are for creating the very refugees we talk about refusing. I live about 20 minutes away from South High School and had no idea they did this kind of work. I am very proud to call Denver home, and hope we continue to be a city that welcomes "the other" and embraces diversity.

I hope Thorpe writes a follow up book in a few years that can tell us what happened to some of the kids in room 142!

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an employee of DPS and a former teacher of Newcomers, I felt that Thorpe did a fantastic job of telling the stories of these kids, while interweaving history, politics and pedagogy. She keeps it real, refrains from hysterics and exaggerations, and makes you feel like you are a member of the classroom community. It makes me want to go back to the classroom and work with Newcomers again.

[Kate Jonuska · Rating 5 out of 5]

This fascinating book puts you in the classroom of recently arrived teenage refugees at South High School in Denver and shows how that classroom is a microcosm for understanding conflicts around the world. Honestly, it's touching how kids are just kids, no matter what language they speak or traumas they endure, and every kid deserves a chance.

[Joey · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book would have been better if:
1) Helen Thorpe had chosen to center someone other than herself
2) Helen Thorpe had done some research before embarking on this venture
3) Helen Thorpe had chosen to interview her subjects about the process of acclimating to a new country, rather than her inept poking around in personal and family trauma.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was SO GOOD and eye-opening and well written and relevant and I want everyone I know to read it and love it too.

[Jenny Shank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a wonderful, important, timely book. And I'm now following the high school track career of one of the featured kids.

[Kelly]

An absolutely fascinating and absorbing look at a single classroom of refugee students at Denver South High School as they learn to navigate a new country, learning English, and forging connections with fellow refugees who speak a wide spectrum of languages with a background of horrifying life experiences. Thorpe gets to know each of these students and it's clear how much love she finds for sharing their struggles, as well as their triumphs.

Set against the backdrop of the 2016 presidential election, the politics of America and those around the world are embedded into the book. It's hard not to feel those ups and downs with each of the students, even if they may not articulate their fears and worries the same way Thorpe does.

What an amazing program this school has set up, and what incredible stories these kids -- and their families -- have lived.

My only real quibble with this book: I kind of wish Thrope spent less time talking about herself and her own experiences. It was a little weird to me she traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo to do some field research, but she didn't do the same for the countries of origin of other students in the classroom (a pair of brothers were from there). What was weird is how much she really dove into that and more, thought she would be protected from the challenges because she was an outsider? It was a weird insert in the book that otherwise had a razor-sharp focus and managed to really focus on the individual students who chose to share with her.

This reminded me a lot of Brooke Hausner's The New Kids: Big Dreams and Brave Journeys at a High School for Immigrant Teens, and I think it's a nice addition to the category of stories from and about the most vulnerable, most misunderstood, and most ignored members of our American society.

A note on the audiobook: I found the performance to be standard, though some of the pronunciations were downright odd. "THE-as-our-us" for thesaurus, "BEAN" for been, and so forth. Those really bothered me. It was also clear when recording sessions began and ended, as the editing wasn't especially smooth. I spent 20 hours with this on audio, so I got use to those things, but they never managed to not break me out of the book when they popped up.

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly well-told narrative of the lives of teenage refugee students who have come from all parts of the world, speaking different languages, having experienced war, death, and various upheavals to land in the English language immersion class at South High School in Denver, CO. Thorpe embeds herself in the classroom and in their lives and narrates their struggles and triumphs against the background of the upcoming 2016 presidential election. As a high school teacher, I appreciate reading about the students' incredible teacher, Mr. Williams and how he transforms a group of quiet, unsure students to confident, emerging- and proficient- English language speakers over the course of the school year. As a native US citizen, I appreciate learning about the obstacles the refugees endure in order to acclimate themselves to this new world while carrying their past trauma with them. These young people's stories give life and blood to the term "refugee" which has been politicized and demonized over the past several years. If anyone wonders what effect welcoming refugees into our country might have, they should read this book.

[Karen Ashmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

The writing was Incredible. The stories of the young refugees were amazing. I serve on a scholarship committee of the Denver Foundation and I was pleasantly surprised to recognize some of the people profiled in the story were also recipients of scholarships I approved. The determination and tenacity of refugees is mind boggling. At the end of the book the author puzzled over why Trump would ban refugees fleeing war and who were some of the biggest defenders of American democracy, the opposite of terrorists he was aiming to thwart. I cannot fathom that, either.

Helen Thorpe lives nearby and I had breakfast with her one morning a couple of years ago. I asked her what her current project was and she told me she was meeting with and researching the lives of recent Middle Eastern refugees and found it fascinating. She followed refugee students at South HS, where one of my good Haitian friends teaches French. Little did I know it was this masterpiece she was working on. Highly recommend to every American - we all take our comfortable lives too much for granted.