Making Refuge

Abstract

The term refugees has become the latest buzzword, causing people to either spew hate speech or extend a warm welcome – thereby creating a firm dividing line. There is so much discussion about refugees that people sometimes forget the very individuals who are forced to stand astride that dividing line. Who are they? What are their stories? What does it mean to be a refugee? How are they coping once they reach the United States? How are their lives impacted by this divisive debate? What are the struggles they continue to have? How are they influencing the larger communities where they live? Catherine Besteman addresses all of these questions (and more) in her timely study, Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine. Besteman introduces the book by speaking of her yearlong stay in Banta, Somalia, as part of her anthropological fieldwork during the late 1980s, just before civil war broke out. She then immediately shifts the lens to Lewiston, Maine, in the year 2010, home to a large Somali refugee community. Juxtaposing these two worlds to frame her inquiry, she delves into Banta’s pre-war history: a simple yet harmonious village life built around communitarianism and happiness within poverty, of agriculture and the “rule” of village elders, of pre-defined gender roles and extended families ...