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.
Hi Taylor,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that refugees seem to go through more pain when they are here than when they are in a country full of war. It is ridiculous and very sad to think of.
Hi!
ReplyDeleteI really agreed with your post, especially what you said about the hardships experienced by the main character in What is the What. I thought it was a much more honest depiction of a refugee's life in America. Although we would like to think that their lives become much better after escaping their war-torn country, that isn't always the case.