Unsettled: The Cambodian Refugee in the NYC Hyperghetto

Among the hundreds of thousands of survivors confined to refugee camps in the wake of the Khmer Rouge genocide, approximately 10,000 Cambodian refugees were eventually “resettled” in the Bronx over the course of the 1980s and ’90s. Chronicling their unfinished odyssey, through the eyes of one woman, Ra Pronh, Unsettled tells the story of an immigrant community’s survival and resistance amid the concentrated poverty of the Bronx. As the first book about Cambodian Americans in New York City, Unsettled also challenges commonly held notions of humanitarian rescue and relief. A community-embedded scholar, author Eric Tang argues that refuge cannot be found when resettlement efforts seek to mask the harsh urban conditions faced by poor people of color and immigrants in cities across the country.

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Naming out Grief: Three Refugee Tales, Fact & Fiction

One of the latest debates taking place on the streets and in the country’s most respected newsrooms is whether to call victims of recent the hurricane refugees. Some say that the word is insulting. It implies that the evacuees, so many of whom were people of color, are not citizens. Author Andrea Louie contends that … Read more