Review by Booklist Review
Journalist Fishman chronicles a school-within-a-school that serves refugee students and those students' heartbreaking experiences. Dangers of the students' home countries follow them to Chicago's Sullivan High, where they join native Chicago teens in a struggle to survive shootings and attacks, and where their unfamiliarity with the culture makes them especially vulnerable to gang recruitment and violence. Desperation to please their fearful parents contributes additional layers of stress to their lives. Trauma and fear darken the pages, but commitment from Sullivan's staff provides hope in the book and the refugee students' lives. Fishman includes teachers' and the principal's points of view, which center on the critical question, "What does it mean to offer a refugee student their best chance for a good life in America?" Putting relationship-building and an asset-based view of diversity at the forefront, staff members design educational experiences to transition their students into American life. Fishman honors Sullivan's work in turning around a previously failing school and caring for students, and fosters understanding for the disparate yet shared trauma of student refugee experiences.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Fishman debuts with an intimate and moving chronicle of the 2017--2018 school year at Sullivan High School in Chicago, where nearly half the student body was born in another country. Fishman explains that principal Chad Adams, who arrived in 2013, set out to turn the struggling school around by increasing funding for the English language learner program. Deeply personal interviews reveal how Sullivan students--ID'd by first names only--struggle with unstable home lives and anxieties over their immigration status. Sixteen-year-old Shahina, a Burmese refugee, escapes an arranged marriage but has to help pay back the $2,000 her mother was given as an engagement gift; meanwhile, Alejandro, a senior, fears that he'll lose his asylum hearing and be sent back to Guatemala, where 10 of his friends have recently been killed in gang violence. Sullivan staff members provide emotional support in addition to English language instruction, and try to assuage worries caused by President Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies. Fishman unearths the inner lives of her subjects with care and precision, and skillfully balances lighter moments (soccer games, TikTok dances) with harrowing turns of events. The result is a powerful portrait of resilience in the face of long odds. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In Chicago's far north side community of Rogers Park, Sullivan High School has welcomed immigrant and refugee students for decades. Currently, 70 percent of the student body speak a second language; 40 languages and 50 countries are represented. Expanding on her Chicago magazine article "Welcome to Refugee High," Fishman (journalism, Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) explores the challenges facing students, teachers, administrators, and parents in 2017--18, as the Trump administration ramped up anti-immigrant and anti-refugee policies. The author adopts a "fly on the wall" approach, sharing the voices of students such as Mariah, a freshman who left Basra, Iraq, at 10; Alejandro, a Guatemalan senior seeking asylum; Belenge, a Congolese sophomore born in a refugee camp in Kigoma, Tanzania; and Shahina, a sophomore from Myanmar. The students shed light on the collision between their cultures and their lives in America. Students and families confront the threat of deportation, gun violence, arranged marriages, poverty, alienation, and alcohol addiction. The book also describes how Sullivan's administrators and teachers devote themselves to overcoming daily demands and crises. VERDICT Educators and general readers alike will find this vividly intimate work insightful.--Jacqueline Snider, Toronto
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A chronicle of one academic year at Sullivan High School in Chicago, where refugee teens from all over the world struggle to acclimate to the U.S. while processing personal and inherited trauma. Throughout the book, Fishman, a journalism professor and award-winning former senior staff editor and writer for Chicago magazine, delivers sharp individual portraits: Mariah, a sophomore from Basra, Iraq, who transferred to Sullivan from another school, struggles with her deteriorating relationship with her sister, who moved to Atlanta to get married at 17. Belenge, a Congolese teen who was born in a refugee camp in Tanzania, struggles with secondhand trauma after his close friend was shot during a possible gang recruitment exercise. Shahina copes with the stress of fleeing a marriage arranged by her Burmese parents, leaving the family $2,000 in debt to the fiance she refuses to wed. Other teens battle court cases to determine their petitions for asylum and endure persistent xenophobia and racism. Through it all, Sarah Quintenz, the beleaguered director of Sullivan's recently created Newcomer Center, and Chad Adams and Matt Fasana, the school's principal and assistant principal, watch over the students, working diligently to help them overcome their challenges through one-on-one interventions and by exposing them to American traditions like Thanksgiving and Halloween. The book is well researched and compassionate, particularly regarding the embattled educators at Sullivan, who often seem as traumatized as their students. Although Fishman is a sympathetic narrator, the emphasis is on struggle and tribulation rather than on the strength of character that her subjects exhibit and their occasional moments of levity and triumph. Additionally, many of them disappear for chapters at a time, leaving large gaps that detract from the narrative cohesion (the list of characters at the beginning helps somewhat). The strength of the book lies at the level of each individual student and educator. A diligently researched and moving yet disjointed story of young refugees and their guardians. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
