The Experience of Being a Refugee

Throughout the book, the author’s core thematic emphasis is on different aspects of the experience of being a refugee. She explores this theme from three perspectives. First, most of the author’s considerations of this theme are anchored in her own experiences as a refugee fleeing various forms of oppression she and her mother experienced in Iran. Those experiences include the before, during, and immediate aftermath of the family’s actual escape, as well as the months that the family waited in an Italian holding center for their fate to be decided. There are also descriptions of the first years that the family spent in America, and of the author’s adolescence and young adulthood coming to terms with the different, often conflicting sides of her identity.

The author’s considerations of the facts of what happened, as well as the when...