There is no single refugee resettlement story
Jessica Goudeau’s new book embeds the memoirs of two very different women in a primer on what it means to seek refuge in America.
In Review
After the Last Border
Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America
Refugee advocates often tell stories using a representative figure to evoke sympathy and motivate charity. Others argue for the restriction of refugee resettlement, using the rule of law as a reason for limiting that sympathy. Jessica Goudeau’s first book is timely and helpful because it avoids these opposing poles.
After the Last Border offers detailed narratives of two refugee experiences while intermittently pausing to explain refugee law and policy. In addition to gaining a working knowledge of what refugee resettlement entails, readers will benefit from Goudeau’s insider knowledge of that system across many years. Just as impressive is the novelistic form she uses to make these stories come alive.
The subtitle is the first clue that Goudeau is writing a different kind of narrative, one that cannot be encapsulated in a singular story. The two families profiled in the book are represented by Hasna, a Syrian grandmother who arrives in Texas in 2016, and Mu Naw, a young mother from the Karen people of Myanmar who arrives in 2007 after spending most of her life in Thai refugee camps.
