The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You by Dina Nayeri

I’ve been reading more nonfiction about immigrants in the past year or so, and one book that’s been high on my list was The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You by Dina Nayeri. At eight years old, she and her family fled Iran and became refugees, ultimately finding a home in Oklahoma in the United States. In addition to her own story, the author also interviews other refugees for a fuller look at what it means to leave your home and seek asylum and safety in a new country.

The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You by Dina Nayeri
Audience	Adult
Genre	Nonfiction: Politics; Immigration
Number of Pages	368
Format I Read	Audiobook
Original Publication Date	September 2, 2019

Official Summary

An Iranian refugee “confronts the issues that are key to the refugee experience,” drawing on her own—and others’—powerful stories (Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author).

“A work of astonishing, insistent importance” that will make you rethink how we talk about the refugee crisis” (Observer).

Aged 8, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel–turned–refugee camp. Eventually she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement. In these pages, a couple fall in love over the phone, and women gather to prepare the noodles that remind them of home. A closeted queer man tries to make his case truthfully as he seeks asylum, and a translator attempts to help new arrivals present their stories to officials.

Nayeri confronts notions like “the swarm,” and, on the other hand, “good” immigrants. She calls attention to the harmful way in which Western governments privilege certain dangers over others. With surprising and provocative questions, The Ungrateful Refugee challenges us to rethink how we talk about the refugee crisis.

Review

The Ungrateful Refugee is equal parts memoir and journalistic portrait of immigration and refugee stories. The two parts are integrated in alternating chapters, helping to make clearer parallels between the author’s own experiences and those of other refugees she interviewed.

Dina Nayeri describes how she, her brother, and their mother became refugees due to religious persecution in Iran. Her mother was a converted Christian who caught the attention of the government. The family was forced to flee Iran for the United Arab Emirates, then Italy, and finally the United States, where they landed in Oklahoma. Through it all, they faced shocking dehumanization and disbelief from those meant to help them. Later, living in Oklahoma, the family was met with new forms of xenophobia and prejudice.

Along with the more memoir portions of the book, The Ungrateful Refugee is rounded out with accounts from refugees in Greece. Due to the number and variation of stories here, we see the many ways people seeking asylum are mistreated yet keep pushing forward. It was eye-opening to see the many unfair expectations others have of refugees, such as how to be a “good” immigrant, or explaining their story a certain way despite cultural differences in communication styles. It was also disheartening to see how some types of refugees are favored over others, depending on why they left their home country what that country is.

So much of this book was painful to read about, but thought-provoking and, hopefully, enough to change how people see refugees and immigrants overall.

Final Thoughts

The Ungrateful Refugee is a wonderfully done book that is passionate and compelling. I felt for Dina Nayeri and all other immigrants represented here, and I hope that we will see some major improvements in how refugees and other immigrants are treated. This is an important and timely read that I will recommend far and wide.