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The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora

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In The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora, Northwestern University professor Wendy Pearlman explores how war not only forced millions of Syrians from their homes but also compelled them to rethink the meaning of home itself. A follow-up to her book We Crossed A Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria, which was long-listed for the American Library Association’s Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, The Home I Worked to Make is a tapestry of original interviews with Syrian refugees that begins with their stories of leaving Syria and follows their journeys around the world as they reflection losing home, searching for home, and finding or not finding home. The personal testimonials in the book explore how people move forward in the shadow of violence while also offering broader lessons about migration, identity, community, and belonging. An excerpt is available in The Baffler, and a Kirkus starred review calls the book “A stunningly curated text that ‘strikes at the core of what it means to exist as a person in the world.”

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Speaker

  • Wendy Pearlman is a professor of political science at Northwestern University and author of six books on the Middle East. Since 2011 she has interviewed hundreds of Syrian refugees around the world about their experiences of revolution, war, displacement, and belonging. She shares their testimonials in two books: We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria, which was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, and the newly published The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora, which traces stories and reflections on the meaning of home.