What is the What Similarities and Differences

The story Eggers tells in his book What is the What presents a few stark contrasts to the stories looked at in God Grew Tired of Us and in Of Beetles and Angels, but each story told also shares some similarities. Each story had many aspects of violence and hardship before coming to America. In God Grew Tired of Us it is as the lost boys are fleeing from Sudan to refugee camps, in Of Beetles and Angels it is as Asgedom and his family flee as refugees to America, and Eggers story features much of the same situations as he flees from Sudan as a refugee. It surprised me to learn of the intense violence and persecution Eggers experiences as he is living in the United States. A striking difference is that Eggers’s hardships do not cease once he arrives in America. I am not meaning to imply that the others’ stories simply breezed by once fleeing to a new country, but Eggers explicitly states in his story that he had “never been kicked. Again, though, I have seen it happen…there is little in the way of violence that I have not seen in Sudan, in Kenya.” (Eggers. 2006. p 9) Eggers had never been physically harmed in the ways his persecutors did in America, even while living in war-torn Sudan. It seems to me that this is a regression in the wrong direction compared to his life in Sudan and Kenya, because not only has he been forced to leave his life and community behind, he has now experienced the pain of being a victim of direct violence. This presses the issue of not assuming that just because a refugee has come to our country, they are going to have a much better and easier life. In reality, at first, the lives of refugees often increase in difficulty rather than become easier. When looking at and telling refugee stories, it is important to remember that we do not know what kind of pain or suffering they have been through. All we can do is listen, support, and eventually, after gathering all the necessary information, begin to help them.