The Ungrateful Refugee

by Dina Nayeri

A Finalist for the 2019 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction

"Nayeri combines her own experience with those of refugees she meets as an adult, telling their stories with tenderness and reverence.” ―The New York Times Book Review

"Nayeri weaves her empowering personal story with those of the ‘feared swarms’ . . . Her family’s escape from Isfahan to Oklahoma, which involved waiting in Dubai and Italy, is wildly fascinating . . . Using energetic prose, Nayeri is an excellent conduit for these heart-rending stories, eschewing judgment and employing care in threading the stories in with her own . . . This is a memoir laced with stimulus and plenty of heart at a time when the latter has grown elusive.” ―Star-Tribune (Minneapolis)

What is it like to be a refugee? It is a question many of us do not give much thought to, and yet there are more than 25 million refugees in the world. To be a refugee is to grapple with your place in society, attempting to reconcile the life you have known with a new, unfamiliar home. All this while bearing the burden of gratitude in your host nation: the expectation that you should be forever thankful for the space you have been allowed.

Aged eight, 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. 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 falls 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.

Nothing here is flattened; nothing is simplistic. Nayeri offers a new understanding of refugee life, confronting dangers from the metaphor of the swarm to the notion of “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 recalibrates the conversation around the refugee experience. Here are the real human stories of what it is like to be forced to flee your home, and to journey across borders in the hope of starting afresh.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Politics, Biography, Audiobook, Iran, Biography Memoir

368 pages, Hardcover

First published September 19, 2019

About the author

Dina Nayeri is a graduate of Princeton, Harvard Business School, and the Iowa Writers Workshop. She spends her time in New York and Iowa City.

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holy moly...
wow wow wow!!!!
WORTH READING...
WORTH DISCUSSIONS ...
but I’m not exactly on the same page with Dina on everything.

I listened to this book from the wonders of Hoopla...
...reminded by just how far technology has come... in supporting instant availability in reading a book ( or listening in this case)...
The author’s ‘voice’ - her intensity of emotions -
was the very first thing I noticed.
Her RAGE was what I noticed.
There was an urgency in her voice that propelled me to keep listening to what she had to say.
But I also started to feel annoyed.
I felt like Dina was screaming at me to be kind to every immigrant - at any cost.
It was the ongoing tone of her voice which began to irritate me.

I’ve read my fair share of refugee- stories. I care about the issues we are dealing with in our country. I don’t want to see children or anyone tossed away like stale bread... or treated with any cruelty.

I also didn’t think I needed to read another book about refugees in the western world.
I was wrong. I guess I need to continue to read many more.
I did need to hear Dina’s views. I empathize with her story and the stories she included from other refugees.
I found the details about her mother and father both engaging.
Her journey out of Iran felt frightening but also relieving.

I was teeter-tottering with my feelings about things Dina said -and the way she said them.

Heck, I live California - the nations most populous immigration state.
Just a few years ago, California took in 7,000 refugees in one year
That number declined drastically under policies enacted by President Trump, the following year.... down 74%.

For decades the Bay Area melting pot has welcome people from Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Ethiopia, etc. offering a second chance in a new land.
Today the resettlement decline pattern is showing up here and across the nation.

It’s very disturbing to know that the United States doesn’t feel like a ‘safe home’ any longer for refugees. I agree that things need to change for the better.
I agree with many issues Dina brings up -
we should treat immigrants and ‘all’ people with dignity.
But....
I couldn’t help but wonder what Dina ‘was’ grateful for?
I have close friends who were born in our country who are struggling more with affordable housing than she is.
Dina’s expectations are high. Not a bad thing, but I began to feel attacked.

In the first part of the book, Dina describes her families hardship journey from Iran, to Europe, and then to the United States.
It was tragic and challenging - but also important to be heard ....
because as we get deeper into her book... Dina’s beef with the fact that immigrants shouldn’t have to feel grateful to be here ...
become apparent. I understand she’s trying to have us see how traumatized a refugee is before stepping ground in the west. We need to be kinder. ( agree...Dina is clear -and right- we need to be much more gentle with refugees pain and confusion).
However,
I’m not convinced that underlying the emphasis on being ‘ungrateful’ will correct anything!

Dina argues a great case for why immigrants should not have to feel grateful in being allowed into other countries.
I wondered why we even need to have this conversation. Again, something felt off to me.

It felt to me that Dina’s emotions were sooo high... she couldn’t quite get her head out of the clouds.
I don’t mean that in a totally negative way...
but was so close to this topic that she closed her eyes to other factors. Housing is not just a problem for refugees but for people who are born here.

Things are bad right now ....
I agree... and something needs to change for the better....
but Dina’s bark was so emotional that I found myself getting irritated.


“Dina Nayeri was just a child when she fled Iran as an asylum seeker. But as she settled into life in the US and then Europe, she became suspicious of the idea that refugees should shed their old identities and be eternally thankful”.

I’ve read the above quote a dozen times ...
I could have a dozen conversations about it.
I’m not in ‘aw’ of this quote ... which at first seems powerful... but then.... it doesn’t. Who is asking that refugees "shed their identities"?

The righteous slant in this book - at times - is bothersome to me. Other times I was fascinated and heartbroken.

Dina has a bachelors degree from Princeton.... a masters from Harvard.... and holds an MFA from Iowa’s writers workshop.

Personally ... I find issues in this book worth exploring carefully ...
but....for a women that escaped her homeland at age 7, is in good health, has a quality education,
(a client of her father who worked in a passport department in Iran, got her entire family passports immediately to leave her country)...
I’d express a little more gratefulness. But that’s me!

4 stars .... because I think it’s worth reading.
But I’m not super rah-rah in agreement with all her ideas and requests.

[Tim Null · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a professional or volunteer that has contact with refugees or immigrants, Dina Nayeri's The Ungrateful Refugee is a must-read. If you want to be prepared for the coming climate apocalypse, you should also read this book. If your reading group or adult Sunday School class is looking for something serious that has far-reaching ethical implications, you might want to consider this book. If you're looking for a light beach read, stay away from this one.

If you do read The Ungrateful Refugee, Nayeri's discussion of a 1983 meeting between Chinua Achebe and James Baldwin (and the last several pages) will be your reward.

This book pairs well with Daniel Nayeri's Everything Sad Is Untrue. Daniel is Dina's brother.

If you like walks down memory lane, stay tuned. If not, you're dismissed.

One summer day years ago, when my daughter was still little, she and I were playing in the sand on a beach in southern New Jersey. It was not too far from Cape May. We were so engrossed in play that we didn't notice the sky turning gray, and the ocean waves growing large and rough. My daughter and I were having great fun, and we were oblivious to the world around us. My wife was nearby on a blanket, totally absorbed by her beach-read novel. We were all totally off our guard when a huge wave suddenly broke on shore and washed away our carefully constructed sand castle. When it retreated, the wave also carried away all my daughter's beach toys. My daughter and I then jumped to our feet and began rushing towards her retreating toys in hopes of rescuing them. Fortunately, I quickly realized the danger we faced. A new and larger wave was about to break on top of us. I grabbed up my daughter, and we retreated to safety. We joined my wife on her beach blanket. We mourned the loss of my daughter's toys, but we rejoiced we were still alive. We pledged to never again become oblivious to the world around us.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dina was right years old when she, her brother and mother fled Iran. As a Christian convert, her mother was spreading pamphlets around the country, an act that brought death threats from the morality authorities. They became refugees.

Told in alternating chapters, Dina chronicles her family's struggles as refugees, with interviews taken later at a camp in Greece. She writes honestly, and with unflinching candor. Highlighting government bureaucracies, stories refugees must tell to be granted asylum. Life in the camps where many spend years, not allowed to work, slowly stagnating while trying to keep hope alive. How it feels to know one is a burden, unwanted, expected to be eternally grateful. The lack of understanding about the refugees own loss of family, culture, country. Being seen as less than, dirty, germ ridden, all of the prejudices many have of refugees.

Some stories are less grim, uplifting, hopeful, but all are worth reading, maybe providing more understanding in this time of refugees coming from so many different places. The book is read by the author and her narration, telling her own story made this more personal, memorable.

[Jenna ❤ ❀ ❤ · Rating 4 out of 5]

"You never forget the moment you were part of a shivering horde, when another human threw you your food, when you slept in mud alongside your confused children, when you shoved and grunted beside other faceless people, some of them former architects, doctors, teachers. It can break your spirit as fast as hunger."

I simply cannot imagine what it is like to be forced to leave your country, the only home you've ever known, the place you grew up and that nourished your soul. To leave behind all the people you've known, not knowing if you will ever see them again. To head off into a hostile world, not knowing where you will end up or if you'll ever see your home again.

As a child, Dina Nayeri was forced to leave her home. Along with her mother and younger brother, they made their way first to the UAE, then to Italy, and finally to the USA. Dina's mother had converted to Christianity and was facing threats from the Iranian government. In The Ungrateful Refugee, Ms. Nayeri relates what it feels like to be a child without a home or a country. What it feels like to be in limbo, plopped in a place that is not home and yet you are forced to stay in. To go to sleep at night not knowing where you will end up. This book is also about several other immigrants, and tells their stories as well.

There were times I was brought to tears, not just because of the subject matter, but because it was written with such passion and anguish and heart-rending prose. At such times, I was utterly captivated. However, not all the book was written with this intensity and clarity. Just as I was absorbed into the pages, the tone would change, the topic would change, and I'd be plopped back into the real world, my attention diverted to my own reality. I found this frustrating. Of course, no one owes us their story nor their pain, but when I read a memoir, I expect to get to know the author as much as is possible through a book. Perhaps the matter was just too difficult to write about that Ms. Nayeri wasn't able to stay in it for long and would need to switch topics, I don't know. Surely this could not have been an easy book for her to write. There was a lot of repetition and too many holes; it wasn't written chronologically but instead jumped all over the place. I don't feel like I got to know her at all; for these reasons I"m giving this 4 stars instead of 5 (actually, 3.5 but I usually round up).

Still, this book was well worth reading. I appreciated the opportunity to expand my mind, to see more what it is like to be a refugee, and especially to see how hurtful it is to expect refugees to be overcome with gratitude. Why? Why do we expect this? These are people who have known great pain and suffering and we just expect them to be so thankful for their plight? Heap praise and songs of thanks upon us for allowing them into our countries? It is demeaning to people to demand their gratitude; we are not giving selflessly if we demand thanks in return. Ms. Nayeri relates how it feels to be expected to be grateful to people when your dignity has just been shattered in your need for charity, how exhausting it is to be expected to show gratitude to everyone you come into contact with. Gratitude comes freely to most and yet it is "so costly if you're tapped for gratitude by everyone you meet."

She also tells how immigrants are often treated, beginning in the detention centers where they are often imprisoned. She pleads for change in the way we handle refugees and immigrants. She asks that immigration officers not be so harsh in their demands for a story without zero contradictions. These are people who have just suffered great trauma and sometimes there will be holes in their stories, not because they are lying but because they have been through so much that the brain has blocked out some things. I did find it irritating though, the expectation that immigrants be given priority over a country's citizens. For instance, she thinks it unfair when they have to wait for subsidized housing. Well, so does everyone. In several cities in the US, one can no longer even be put on a waiting list for subsidized, low income housing because the wait time is decades long. In a perfect world, no one would have to wait for affordable housing, but it's not a perfect world, and if a country is not taking care of its citizens, why should we expect them to treat immigrants better? I hope that does not make me sound xenophobic; I am not. I think we in the West should be doing everything we can to help immigrants, but not by giving them preferential treatment. That only breeds contempt and animosity, and there is more than enough hatred towards immigrants and refugees as it is. We can do better and we must do better, towards all people.

As the effects of climate change worsen, there will be less resources, more unrest, and more immigrants. Countries need to be working now towards a solution that can assimilate as many people as possible; find ways to create jobs for more people, force corporations and billionaires to pay a fair share of taxes so that there is more money to go around for everyone. I don't know what the answer is. It's imperative that we work on it though. If a solution can be found, we need to do all we can to find it.

Do I recommend this book? Absolutely. It might sometimes be frustrating and repetitive but it is still an important book to read, to help us better understand our fellow human beings, and to learn how to do better when it comes to our expectations of immigrants. We owe our fellow humans compassion and understanding and thus it is crucial to learn as much as we can and reading books like The Ungrateful Refugee is a good place to start.

(Thank you to Counterpoint Press for inviting me to read this book and providing me with an ARC in return for my honest review. My thanks also to the author Dina Nayeri and the publisher Catapult.)

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm very torn on what rating to give this book. On the one hand, some parts of it are so beautifully written that it should be praised to the rooftops. On the other, it rambles about and loses its sense of direction far more often than I liked.

I found the concept of the 'ungrateful' refugee very compelling. Why should the West treat immigrants as if they somehow hit the jackpot when they arrive in a nice 'safe-ish' democracy and we lock them up in detainment camps and assume everything they tell us is a lie? The people Nayeri describes left their home countries because their lives were at risk and some - such as she and her mother and brother - left behind beautiful homes and very comfortable lives. Her mother was a Christian convert and so apostate in the eyes of the Iranian regime. Their exodus from Iran was more comfortable than many but still no bundle of laughs. They were eventually accepted in the USA, she got a great education, and subsequently wrote about and campaigned for the rights of refugees.

There are fascinating cultural observations. That an Iranian seeking asylum in the Netherlands has an almost insurmountable barrier to break through that's not about language so much as story-telling. An Iranian can't start a story at the beginning - she tells us. He has to start way back before the beginning and travel a circuitous route to eventually come to the point. A Dutch immigration official has grown up with brevity, precision, and a culture of always coming quickly to the nub of the matter. One thinks the story has to be told in overwhelming detail. The other sees detail as a way to trap people into inconsistency.

In the first half of the book, there are some fascinating accounts of the personal challenges and tragedies of other refugees and these are always insightful. In the second half, things just start to ramble about rather too much.

I was up against a deadline to return my ebook and this lack of structure in the second half had me dragging myself through the final chapters. With a little more focus, this would have been a four-star read for me. I appreciate the insight and the quality of the writing, but that lack of direction has me giving this just a 3-star rating this time.

[Robert Sheard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a mixed experience with this. The journalistic parts about others' refugee stories were powerful and engaging. The sections on her own refugee experience and her feelings about that experience today were a little less engaging for me. Her reactions to her grandmother's experience, and then to her mother's attitude, and then in the very end, her half-sister's wishes, seem very much reminiscent of the views she condemns throughout the book in others. I think this might have worked well as two different books: one for her own story and another for the journalism. Putting the two together creates some thematic resonances, but I think it made it harder for the reader to distill. I don't know; I'm not sure I'm explaining this at all well.

[Paltia · Rating 4 out of 5]

An electrifying essential read. Nayeri describes the West as “as a mother who once adopted us, the exiles and outcasts, and now needs us to intervene as calluses harden fast around her heart.” This is her story as well as the story of the many. She sets out to volunteer on Lesbos and finds the stories of the people there bring her past tumbling back. While working in a “store” handing out donations she encounters the rotten attitude of those who will only give to the worthy poor. Those that deserve it. “Many donors want to assign criteria to the food that is given out...They want to police.” I can recall this same attitude at a place I once worked when people donated food baskets at holidays but attached the prerequisite that the parents not smoke or use their food stamps to buy cookies instead of powdered milk and peanut butter. They had to prove they were worthy to receive charity. This is the classic blaming the victim. The men, women and children in this book have been to hell and back. They’ve had to face and overcome defeat again and again. Although there are those who stand in their way, these people have dreams that are stronger than the selfishness and ignorance of the many. Their stories contain the hopes and wishes that they carry inside in an unstoppable movement. They, like all of us, seek a place of safety. Their stories are also full of risk, hurt, pain, terrible images and harsh refusals. I couldn’t look away untouched by what I read. Oh for a renewal of loving, welcoming and understanding in this land.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book blew me away. Nayeri combines her personal experience and the larger political situation and experiences of refugees in the world at present. She visits detention camps, talks with people trying to find asylum (fleeing from unbearable situations that people from other cultures cannot--and often do not try to--understand.

Although I thought I had some knowledge of this current crisis, Nayeri's book made me aware of just how superficial that knowledge is. She also made me examine my own assumptions of how the way I experience "truth" and perform my experience is shaped by my own culture and how people from other cultures may show/describe/explain their experience very differently, in ways that may look "false" to me.

In addition to her riveting portrayal of what it means to be a refugee, often caught in a no-man's-land for months or even years as well as often being refused the asylum they so desperately need (as she eloquently says, no one leaves home, certainly with a family, just "because", it is desperation that drives people into boats, leaving everything they own and love behind them, searching for a safe place to live), Nayeri discusses ways in which those of us who "mean well" can interact helpfully with people trying to adjust to a new culture. Ultimately, though, she says the effort to interact is valuable, even when done inadequately, with many missteps (she confesses she has as well). People of education, with skills and training are often considered ignorant and worthless because they do not speak the language of their new country. And the families of the refugees, even when they find asylum, a home and work (all of which are huge challenges) then have to struggle to redefine, even reinvent, themselves to find a place for themselves in their new world. And often (as Nayeri herself experienced) the relationships between parents and children are strained as the children assimilate into a world their parents do not understand and reject many of the values and gifts their parents hold dear as they seek to belong to their new culture.

I was also interested in Nayeri's exploration of the idea of how each of us, wherever we are from, refugee or native, defines the truth of our lives, of our self. She combines her life as a writer, who is always seeking to create a "true" story through fiction (that is, essentially, through lies) with her struggle to understand herself, not only as a refugee but also as a human, in the way we all must find our truth. She writes of the "wedge" of our lives that defines, presents, identifies that truth--that slice of life in which we are defined, even transformed from the person we were (as a child or adolescent) to the person we are today. She makes a beautiful connection between the experience of a refugee with our own: we are all refugees from our childhood, exiled from that home of the self we once knew.

Nayeri challenges wealthy countries to welcome those people who desperately need a chance to live. This is a time that is, throughout the world, particularly hostile to strangers, "outsiders", refusing them a place in our world. We seem fearful that there is not enough to share and judgmental of those fleeing a world that has become terrifying. And this is a situation which any of us might have to confront. Anyone's situation could become everyone's. What would we want should our world become unlivable? Can we empathize and welcome the stranger who needs a home? Who are we and what do we want to be? These are some of the questions Nayeri poses for our consideration.

[Bookworm · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title got my interest especially as I know a little bit of the author's backstory and had read other works by her. I was intrigued to read what she had to say, especially in light of the ongoing conversation of refugees seeking a better life, safety and hope for the future.

The author lays out her own journey from being a refugee to living in a new life in an unfamiliar and strange land that is not at all like what the media might have portrayed it as. Interwoven are also the stories of other refugees and their stories of what they fled, what they left behind and a little of what they have now.

It was a disappointment. I wasn't really into the author's other works but I had hoped I might like this one. Sometimes it's really interesting and readable. But I felt it was rambling and disjointed. I never really felt I could really connect with either the author's story or the others she wrote about.

I think the author's writing style just isn't for me, but lots of people liked her books. Library borrow was best.

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

A powerful dissection of the refugee journey by someone who trod the same path and who keeps returning to it like a punch-drunk boxer, to help others along its tenuous passage to the promised land.

Dina Nayeri left Iran at the age of eight in 1989, along with her PhD-qualified mother and younger brother; she lived for a while in Dubai on an expired tourist visa, then moved to Italy as a refugee, and finally settled in the USA. Her life story is episodic, some incidents are pulled from memory and are therefore sketchy (the Dubai of the 1980s she describes is not the same place I lived in, but then I wasn’t a refugee), and at other times is full of gaps, chronologically. But her focus is on the refugee-experience: when she was a refugee, when she is interacting with refugees after having crossed over to the other side, when she is describing the stories of select refugees, or when she is reflecting on the plight of refugees in general.

The biggest loss to the refugee is that of time. No school, no ability to work, and being restricted to a camp while in Refugee Limbo. Time is lost at border crossings that have to be attempted several times before a boatload gets through. Time is lost waiting for a case to be heard – sometimes refugees go mad, make mistakes that compromise their case, or commit suicide. Time is lost to build a new career in the host country when the old qualifications from the home country do not count anymore; despite her Iranian PhD, Dina’s mother has to re-invent herself many times over due to her poor English and due to the baggage of devout Christianity she embraced to shut herself off from Islamic Fundamentalists who had taken over her country.

At one end of the spectrum are refugees like Kaweh who gets through the eye of the needle in England after a circuitous overland route and goes on to become a prominent refugee lawyer; at the other end is Kambiz, of the same age and who left Iran at the same time, who gets mired in the refugee pipeline in Holland for 14 years and finally sets fire to himself in Dam Square.

The fear of being sent back is a constant nightmare even for naturalized refugees in their new homeland. Like Dina, they become super-achievers to keep the beast at bay. The author becomes a Tae Kwon Do champion, starves herself to achieve the desired weight category in her sport, and trains until she is black and blue. She graduates from Princeton and gets an MBA from Harvard. She lives in Holland and then in England, always on the move. When she travels to a refugee camp in Greece as a volunteer in 2016, she realizes that the modern refugee has different priorities than her batch had – WiFi is the most sought-after commodity now – but that the journey, and the acceptance, is harder as the world is more awash in refugees than in her time.

She spends a lot of time re-iterating that getting one’s story right is key. A lie uttered at the beginning of the process, whether by omission or commission, is hard to erase later, because the authorities are looking for any excuse to decline, not accept. And you must believe your story, whether it is exaggerated or not. Embellishing is okay, just stick to it. “Facts are the least believable. It is fiction’s job to fix them in the service of truth” – a lesson she learns when she flees her first marriage to become a writer and join the Iowa Writer’s alumni – is also applicable to refugees.

I found her level of human knowledge, honed in the crucible of the refugee experience, to be remarkable for a 38-year-old. Here are a few insights:
1. The refugee will take years to fully convert to the new country, there are no instant epiphanies.
2. The host countries absorb the refugees’ talents and claim them for their own.
3. Those with chameleon-like natures (i.e., adaptable, like Dina) are the most likely to succeed in the refugee journey.
4. Refugees invent stories to fit eligible categories for acceptance (i.e., gay, Christian etc.) and later get caught out under interrogation.
5. The Americans and British want undamaged goods, not flawed individuals, while some refugees are prone to damage themselves to release stored energy and frustration.

The one point I found lacking in this book, is that Dina too falls into the trap of beating up the host countries for their unwillingness and inability to improve their refugee intake systems and processes to absorb the burgeoning hordes of refugees emanating from countries in political, ecological, or economic turmoil. But she doesn’t aim enough barbs at those dysfunctional countries, Iran included, for their barbaric practices that jettison their best and brightest. The Ungrateful Refugee, indeed.

[Mehrsa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I LOVED Dina Nayeri's novel, Refugee, and I bought a copy for everyone I know. It was just so beautiful. This is sort of a memoir, but it's really not. If it had been a polemic, a memoir, or an analysis of the refugee experience, I think it would have been a clearer a story. The book is a series of interviews with refugees and then bits of memoir and then her observations on refugee life. I couldn't figure out who the audience was. I loved the memoir portions because I relate to them completely, but there wasn't enough in there. She spends one line talking about her nose job and dying her hair red and passing for white. What? why not explore that? But it seems as though she is not writing the book for me. She is writing it to the people in the host country of the refugee--and those who distrust asylum seekers. It was all over the place as an argument though. I just could never grab on to a thread of thought long enough to figure out what she was saying besides "It's hard to be a refugee." I mean, that's not totally true because there is a lot in here that was just brilliant, but it was not well organized.

[Ayala Levinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

another MUST READ book about European immigration policies, refugees camps and about how dutch immigration treat refugees and asylum applicants😩
It is a MUST READ for everyone living in a western country, who hear politicians dehumanizing people who happened to become refugees, who give teddy bears for refugees in Greece. The story of Kambiz Roustayi is heartbreaking in its ununiqueness💔

[daria ❀ · Rating 4 out of 5]

in honor of nowruz (aka the persian new year), i went ahead and recommended this and many other persian reads here: https://youtu.be/Ipjcp_e0fOU

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was torn on what rating to give to this story.
I will share a few things that made me give it three stars instead of four.

Listening to the audio-book narrated by the author is always a great way to get the proper emotion from a book. I felt Dina Nayeri's passion and concern as she tells her story. Dina seemed to initially be comfortable with who she was, until other kids (who can be really mean) gave her reason to question herself. Dina left Iran with her mother for a better life. She recalls all the terror and confusion of the departure, and recalls how she felt various emotions through this journey. She was able to get a home in the United States, but was always striving to be better than everyone at something (anything). I loved hearing her truthful tales and she made me feel compassionate about what she had to endure.

But what does a little girl really know about a better life? She seemed to always want something else. It almost seemed as if nothing was good enough for her. She wanted, almost expected, more than what she was given. I understand there were many, many reasons for her ungratefulness, but even as an adult, it seems as if she became more ungrateful instead of understanding how many people were giving or sharing what they felt was best for her. It may not have been the best, and I completely understand how this may have caused some anger an regret. I am not able to judge her too much, since I have never walked a mile in her shoes. But I did walk miles in my own. For me, as a young single mother, I was ever grateful for the help I received from many, and rather than be angry for what I didn't get, I made myself better in order to give to myself and not take from others.
Yet, I don't recall Dina ever once in this book saying that it was this giving and sharing that allowed her to become the person she is today. What would she have become if she had to stay in war-torn Iran? Would she have survived? She has so much anger. The latter part of the book she just became angrier and angrier. There are so many better ways to direct that energy. I hope she can get past the anger and be more compassionate toward herself, those that want to help her, and those that need help.

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

This is an excellent work, combining the author’s memoir with stories of other refugees and reflections on refugees’ treatment and the difficulties of immigration. The prose style is strong and polished, the stories compelling, and the topic timely and important.

Dina Nayeri was born in Iran, to a privileged life in which both parents were doctors. Her family was complicated—as I suspect most families are if you dig into them—and when Nayeri was a child, her mother converted to Christianity, setting off a chain of events that ended in fleeing the country with her two children. The book tells the story of Nayeri’s childhood in the Islamic Republic—the good, the bad, the contradictions—the family’s flight, their time as undocumented immigrants in the UAE, in a refugee hostel in Italy, and ultimately their resettling in Oklahoma. It also follows her quest to prove herself as a teen, and some stories from her adulthood, focusing on later engagement with refugees.

The memoir is woven together with other threads, which works well for me—it keeps everything fresh, and had me eager to read whatever came next. Other threads involve accounts of several other Iranian refugees Nayeri meets, mostly in refugee camps. These portions aren’t long but they’re compelling (though I disagree that she had to create scenes and dialogue to make them so; plenty of great nonfiction does not). And Nayeri does an excellent job of bringing people to life on the page in few words, showing their personalities and interests and positions within their family, so they are depicted as full-fledged humans and not just names attached to a sad story. The same is true in her depictions of her own family, which show a great deal of nuance.

Of course, there’s a purpose to all this, and that’s to discuss the realities of refugee life and push back on anti-refugee sentiment in the western world. Understanding people as human and not a faceless other is crucial. But Nayeri goes beyond that, in discussing the ways the current system makes refugees’ situations worse. For instance, the crabbed expectations of asylum officers looking for reasons to reject people rather than listening their stories with curiosity. She points out some of the ways that cultural expectation mismatches make convincing people of your honesty harder, and the ways asylum officers can expect people to have more insight into their own psychology than is realistic. She also discusses the psychological damage from accepting charity, and the importance of respecting people’s dignity, which programs set up to help all too often work against (true for the native-born poor as well as for refugees, I’d add).

All in all, a thought-provoking and insightful work. It is a bit confronting, though not as much as I expected from the title—I came away with the sense that Nayeri cares deeply about these issues and wants people to understand, not that she’s glorying in self-righteousness or just wants to make white people feel guilty. And she doesn’t target just one country for criticism: the examination of the asylum process is focused mostly on the British and Dutch systems, while her own childhood immigration story takes place in the U.S. I’ll quote a couple of passages I marked, one short:

“I knew that I was capable of rooting for someone who wasn’t totally on the right side of a thing. In war, villainy and good change hands all the time, like a football.”

And one long:

“People ask, how can I help? Get involved? Give them space? I want to say, be patient. Give them many chances.

New immigrants are lonely and cautious. And refugees arrive traumatized. Every last one, even the happiest, is broken in places. They won’t always behave deservingly. Many suffer from shame, notions of inferiority. They are prone to embracing the very racism and classism that most harms them. They want to believe that the systems are fair, that they can earn their way into the good graces of the well-placed white man.

They need friendship, not salvation. They need the dignity of becoming an essential part of a society. They have been so often on the receiving end of charity that when faced with someone else’s need, their generosity and skill shines. Now and then, they will fall short, their wounds will open, they will have too many needs. You might misstep and cause harm. That is better than drawing a thick line around them. In life, people disappoint each other. Messes are made. The only way to avoid pain is to distance yourself, to look down at them from the rescuer’s perch. But that denies them what they most urgently need: to be useful. To belong to a place.

This, I believe, is the way to help the displaced. It is what we owe each other, to love, to bring in outsiders. Again and again, I’ve failed at it.”

I especially appreciate this because I’ve seen some poorly-considered ideas about what “avoiding saviorism” means—it doesn’t mean don’t help others! It means not making people’s decisions for them, or behaving as if they’re a different species from you.

My one major criticism of the book is that it focuses exclusively on refugees in a way that sometimes seems to deny that other categories of immigrant exist. People do migrate for economic reasons, after all (even if those from wealthy countries are too quick to suspect this as refugees’ “real” motive). Sometimes out of desperation, and sometimes just for a good opportunity—there are plenty of wealthy expatriates out there, after all. I don’t think Nayeri ever entirely squares this reality with her argument that no one would put themselves through fleeing their home unless their life was in danger, though she approaches the issue at the end.

Overall though, I enjoyed reading this, appreciated the complexity of the personal stories and the thoughtfulness of the author’s arguments. An excellent book that should be read widely!

[Kinga · Rating 4 out of 5]

In turns fascinating and self-indulgent. Part reportage, part memoir which very occasionally becomes too neurotic for my sensibilities.

Nonetheless, a very solid piece of work that focuses on the questions of gratitude that the refugees are asked to perform in front of the native inhabitants of the country, usually those who had nothing to do with their rescue and the only thing they have over the refugees is the accident of birth.

The other leitmotif of this book is the subject of storytelling itself – a successful refugee is the one who is a good story teller, the one who can adapt his or her story to its culturally foreign listener. It made me think of our own stories. We all have that origin myth we cultivate, but unlike refugees, we don’t have it dissected and questioned so meticulously. The meditations on cultural differences in approaching storytelling, truth, and memory gave me a lot of food for thought. The truth is we want good stories from people we are willing to help – it has to be just right, a good dose of misery but mixed with resilience and inner strength, so that we know our help won’t be squandered.
I have been working for charities for years now and this is not the first time I’ve been thinking about those issues, how often gifts come with so many conditions they cease to be useful.

While not a refugee, I am an immigrant, and thus related to descriptions of the complicated relationship the author has with her home country. It’s always a love-hate relationship and the more time passes since we left, the more we romanticise that paradise lost and resort to the expressions of that longing that make our friends and family who still live there cringe. Additionally, in our new country we find ourselves to be spokespeople and representatives for our home country, while in our home country we are being chastised for voicing any opinions since we ‘don’t even live there’.

[Hannah]

"you have to understand, / no one puts their children in a boat / unless the water is safer than the land." -Warsan Shire, "Home"

THE UNGRATEFUL REFUGEE is a clarion call for human dignity, especially for those who have been forced from their home countries. Nayeri details her experience fleeing Iran as a child and ties it to several other refugees' stories--people who fled persecution and certain death to give themselves and their families a better life. She tears the flimsy distinction between "economic migrant" and "refugee" to shreds as she argues for a common humanity no matter the circumstances and reveals callous and inhumane Western attitudes and policies towards immigrants. This is a book that should be read by everyone, especially those who are white and American or European-born--it acknowledges that nuance is the rule, not the exception, especially when telling a story filled with pain, loss, and indignity. Above all, Nayeri urges us all to go beyond shallow political maneuvering to see the real, human stories hidden within the people we meet.

[Crazytourists_books · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is an extremely interesting book that gives insight to the refugee's experiences and makes the reader think about privilege, double standards, cruelty, etc.
I am greek, our seas have turned into graveyards of people trying to find better life in Europe. Our islands have turned into prisons, hells like Moria, for those that didn't drown, where they slowly wither, losing hope and dignity.
I am not a refugee, but I am an immigrant, even though my European passport makes me a "better" one, a more accepted one. I was never (at least not in my face) accused of being an opportunist, like many others. I was never judged for wanting a better life. Having (the right) papers makes such a huge difference for human worth?!
This book is heartbreaking for those who have even a sliver of humanity left in their hearts, and it would be a good start for those that easily lift their finger to point to humans and demand them to "go home" and fight and die. Nobody puts their babies, their loved ones in a dinghy if it's not their only chance for survival.

[Altynai · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unsufferable. The author came across as most self-absorbed and narcisstic. She said she had nowhere to look in the schoolyard unless was at the very top of the student ranking (since the other three sides of the yard, the ones without a ranking, apparently, were too unpleasant to look at). She bragged about her grades being better than her ex-husband's, and she complained that as a refugee she no longer had her grades anymore to command respect, and she was pities by the "most ordinary children".
She is also not a reliable narrator. For example, she describes her teacher tearing her writing and leaving the blank pages of the notebook intact. She claims her teacher did it on purpose to show that her writing is worth less than blank pages. How did she know? Perhaps the teacher did not want to ruin her entire notebook, or perhaps the notebook was too thick to tear, or the teacher did not want to spend her energy on tearing the entire notebook. There are certainly alternatives to her self-centered interpretation of the event.
Also, some of the vibes are outright vile: the author describes being angry at the teacher and thinking that the teacher's skin is dry, the teacher can not get a blackmarket Nivea cream, therefore she needs a little girl's tears to soften her skin. Excuse me? She was six. Six. How can a six-year old child have such complex and twisted thoughts? It is unreliable narration or is she actually that vile?
Her descriptions of other refugees' lives are better, but even those are marred by her unbearable personality seeping through the lines. For instance, she writes "I chuckled" in the situation when a teacher was struggling to manage traumatized refugee children.
Rant over. But I could go on more and more.
Edit in Sep 2025: clarity.

[Jodi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Parts of this were really great, and some the refugee stories were amazing, but overall it's really scattered and hard to follow.

[Ange ⚕ angethology · Rating 4 out of 5]

[3.75 stars]

"Writing then, is a repatriation for me, my way toward home."

A super enlightening read on Dina Nayeri's as well as others' experiences of being a refugee, this memoir shows the bitter truth of what it's like to navigate through systems that are actively working against you, and Nayeri is "one of the lucky ones." Despite the provoking and straightforward title, Nayeri's identity is more complex and everchanging, having finally embraced both her American and Iranian upbringing, although eventually feeling a bit alienated toward the latter as she settles into the US with time: "Our story was a sacred thread woven into my identity."

Refugees, particularly people of colour are often seen by Westerners as "taking advantage of the system." There are a set of particular reasons that are viewed as justified in order to seek asylum in western countries, you have to be desperate, eternally grateful, and bow down to every government's whims and desires: ".. if you are born in the Third World and you dare to make a move before you are shattered, your dreams are suspicious." In the US, this superiority is manifested as America being the magical land of dreams realised if you work hard enough, and in Europe, your "story" has to be "purely factual," no emotions and no theatrics are allowed, but at the same time, if you repeat the same stories told by others over and over, the government still raises their eyebrows at you. As an asylum officer in Ter Apel says, they're not looking for reasons to accept a refugee — they're vehemently looking for any loophole, inconsistency, flaw to reject them. Asylum seekers aren't treated as people, and each case to be accepted must be "special" —they must be "specifically targeted:" .. a public pillage isn't about you. You're not a dissident, just an ordinary rape victim."

To be a refugee is to be a storyteller or a writer, and I love how Nayeri overlaps the technical aspects of that with the stories she tells about herself and others. However, this is of course, unfair, as different cultures and languages will have different expressions of one's stories, and Western governments tend to project their own interpretations of happenings that they can't really fathom. One story that stands out to me is Kanbiz Roustayi's, who did everything right, followed the rules, worked hard, and after 9 years of living in the Netherlands, his asylum application got rejected and he set himself on fire. The "waiting" period is what kills people's drive; with no clear purpose, future, no skills being consistently honed, especially as they are much more likely to be exploited and violated: "When you have no rights, everyone has power over you."

Sometimes, I did think that the interweaving of Nayeri's experiences along with others' was a bit confusing too follow; there wasn't a specific structure or narrative set, and other refugee's stories were incorporated in a bit sporadically. But I do feel that this was deliberately done, in a way that mimics Nayeri's conflict with her identity, and struggles to assimilate while standing out just enough to be extraordinary. At some point, Nayeri notices that she starts questioning some refugees' stories the way some people have questioned hers: "Do I really believe [their story]?" Nayeri does acknowledge her privilege and admits the biases she harbors, and she does show her "ungratefulness."

Ultimately, there is no right or wrong way to be a refugee, and you can do everything right while still being stuck in the system for years — it's simply sheer luck that you weren't born in a wartorn country, or to wealthy parents. And Nayeri's memoir is a good reminder of that, told in a mosaic of emotions.

[Aaron Stoltzfus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the most beneficial books are those that make us uncomfortable, and this one certainly does. It contains a call to empathize with those that don’t feel belonging. That don’t have a home in the country they come from, and don’t feel at home in the country they arrived in. And so many of them are in limbo, stuck between countries that don’t want them or don’t believe them.

I appreciated how the author didn’t avoid the negative stereotypes that are sometimes glibly pegged on refugees, but addressed them directly and gave them context. In other words, gave them a human face with human desires and dreams.

Though the author no longer professes to be a Christian, I was convicted and reminded of our call as Christians:

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’” Matthew 25:34-40

[Jacqueline · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. A necessary read. Horrific and hopeful. Atrocities alternated with stories that are extremely sobering and eye-opening.

[Maggie Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Always feels weird rating memoirs because it’s someone’s life but this was tough to follow in some parts. I really enjoyed part 4-the part on assimilation and learned some valuable points from her experience. I also enjoyed this book because her brother is the author of Everything Sad Is Untrue, so hearing both their perspectives was neat!!

[Pauline]

On m’a offert ce livre, je ne connaissais pas son existence avant de l’avoir entre les mains. Entremêlant le parcours de l’autrice avec les histoires romancées de plusieurs immigrés, Faiseurs d’histoires est un roman singulier puisque aussi en partie un essai politique. J’ai beaucoup aimé ce qu’il disait du travail d’écriture quand on est une personne déracinée, il y avait des leçons à glaner pour tout écrivain en herbe. C’était aussi un texte d’une grande beauté sur les réfugiés, les histoires qu’ils racontent et celles qu’on attend d’eux pour qu’ils deviennent à nos yeux les bons migrants. Je recommande.

[Kamila Kunda · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Stories lie when they’re dead, when they reveal nothing new about the world. When they’re heartless or mindless or a deflection from more important stories. When characters are one-dimensional or flat, they lie. Language lies when it obfuscates, or distracts from the way things are”.

Dina Nayeri’s “The Ungrateful Refugee” is such a brilliant mixture of memoir, reportage and essayism, it made me consider so many issues related especially to refugees’ storytelling (and especially that of Iranian refugees) and colonialism that I hadn’t thought of before and I cannot stop thinking about the book even though already two months passed since I read it. Nayeri describes her own background, from being raised in a privileged Iranian family to becoming a refugee - first in Dubai, then Italy, the US and the UK, via Amsterdam. Her severe OCD impacted her coping mechanisms in a unique way and made her develop a survival strategy which most people are unable to do.

The stories she tells about other people - those she met at a refugee camp in Greece, those she learned about from conversations with lawyers and activists in the Netherlands - are analysed with honesty and openness I have only seen in neurodivergent people. It’s an angle I had never read about and it’s very revealing.

I absolutely loved the author’s reflections on the psychological dimensions of becoming a refugee, and she truly explores the topic in depth, asking so many questions that I felt Nayeri and I were having a conversation (this happens with great authors). Her analysis of how refugees tell stories and how believable they are from a cultural perspective is something that will help me a lot in my work as it’s an issue I have been fascinated by without being able to articulate where exactly my curiosity comes from. Her thoughts on assimilation will also stay with me for a long time.

“The Ungrateful Refugee” is an utterly fascinating book, one of those that open doors to a deeper understanding of others and seeing things from other people’s perspectives. It’s challenging, often uncomfortable but one I would definitely recommend everyone to read.

[Toffee Mama · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've never encountered such a wide chasm between the skillful use of language and the complete lack of logic as is in this book. The accounts of refugees were fascinating, but the author calls herself a liar halfway through the book, which somewhat dulls the impact of her emotional appeals. By the time she describes how she spent hours trying to convince a man whom she just met that he was gay, I was just trying to speed through the rest of the book. She proclaims compassion for everyone except the natives of whatever country others want to inhabit.

The author comes across as a deeply miserable person, and she says as much in several rambling chapters near the end of the book. Until she gets a handle on her mental illness (which she describes thoroughly but takes great care not to admit), I'm afraid that she'll never get past sophistry.

[Catapult · Rating 5 out of 5]

In her first work of nonfiction, winner of the 2018 UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize Dina Nayeri—an author whose “exploration of the exile’s predicament is tender and urgent” (The New Yorker)—examines what it means to be a refugee through her own story of childhood escape from Iran, and through the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers.

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

A perfect title for this book, I can say no more.

[Maureen Grigsby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a critical and compassionate book about the very real struggles of refugees as they leave everything they know and love behind to ask for asylum in a new country. Dina Nayeli has lived that life. In this book, she analyzes the experience of herself and her family, but also tells the story of many other refugees. Every story is unique, and sad, and desperate. She makes a strong argument that we need more humanity when we help people settle into a new land. This was an excellent discussion of this topic.