| Contents |
Foreword / US Representative Ilhan Omar -- Cast of characters -- Prelude -- A handbook for forgetting -- Like a woman drowning -- What we lost -- The storm inside the story -- In the garden of bitter fruit -- Haneen -- Define "eventually" -- Cinderella in Jordan -- Homeless, tempest-tost -- The treasure of Syria -- Translations -- How to build a country -- Coda. |
| Abstract |
"Accidental Sisters follows the lives of five refugee women in Houston, Texas, an epicenter of refugee resettlement, as they make their way through a yearlong program for struggling single mother refugees overseen by Alia Altikrity, herself a former refugee from Iraq. Entirely grounded in the words of each of these women--Mina, also from Iraq; Maandi from Sudan; Sara and Zara from Syria; and Elikya from the Democratic Republic of Congo--this book recounts, with deep insight, the lives they lived in their mother countries and the way they were forced to flee with their children into the uncertainty of displacement in neighboring lands. And although it documents the safety and refuge the women eventually find in the new city to which they have been permanently resettled, it critiques the insistence of the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program on rapid self-sufficiency and offers an alternative vision of the American Dream, one grounded in a sisterhood of mutual care for one another"-- Provided by publisher. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Issued in other form | Online version: Meyer, Kimberly. Accidental sisters Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2024] 9780520384682 |
| Genre/form | Case studies. |
| LCCN | 2023029704 |
| ISBN | 9780520384675 hardcover |
| ISBN | 0520384679 hardcover |
| ISBN | electronic book |
