Refugee High: Coming of Age in America

by Elly Fishman The New Press 8/10/2021, hardcover SKU: 9781620975084   Lit Hub's Most Anticipated of 2021 A year in the life of a Chicago high school that has one of the highest proportions of refugees of any school in the nation Winner of the Studs and Ida Terkel Award For a century, Chicago's Roger C. Sullivan High School has been a home to immigrant and refugee students. In 2017, during the worst global refugee crisis in history, its immigrant population numbered close to three hundred--or nearly half the school--and many were refugees new to the country. These young people came from thirty-five different countries, speaking among themselves more than thirty-eight different languages. For these refugee teens, life in Chicago is hardly easy. They have experienced the world at its worst and carry the trauma of the horrific violence they fled. In America, they face poverty, racism, and xenophobia, but they are still teenagers--flirting, dreaming, and working as they navigate their new