Between Everything and Nothing

by Joe Meno

Joe Meno brings a novelist's eye to the true story of two young men from Ghana and their journey from the unjust political system of their homeland through the chaos of the United States' failing immigration system

Based on extensive interviews with Seidu Mohammed and Razak Iyal, Joe Meno's nonfiction debut recounts the harrowing journey of two Ghanian asylum seekers hoping to build a better life in North America.

Long before ever meeting by chance at a Minneapolis bus station on December 23rd, 2016, Seidu and Razak had already endured more injustice than most. Forced to flee the inhumane social policies of their native Ghana, both men separately embarked on perilous odysseys that took them through the jungles and bureaucracies of South and Central America. Like countless immigrants before, they arrived at the United States border with high hopes and the reasonable expectation that their worst days were behind them. But instead of finding asylum and the American Dream, Seidu and Razak became trapped in a nightmare as detainees in a private detention facility where a byzantine and cruel plea process stripped them of their humanity and treated them like criminals simply for wanting the chance at a better life. Unable to return to Ghana and with the rise of anti-immigration sentiment extinguishing any lingering hopes for a happy outcome in the United States, Seidu and Razak set their sights on Canada. Crossing the Canadian border would prove to be riskier and more tragic than anything that came before.

Seidu and Razak's perilous journey has already received international media attention for the way it typifies the uncaring and exploitative immigration crisis at our southern border and beyond. With this intimate and heartbreaking account, Joe Meno brings to life the horrors of the global asylum industry, adding a much needed personal dimension to one of the greatest humanitarian concerns the world now faces.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Africa, Sociology, Ghana, Race, Memoir

336 pages, Hardcover

First published June 2, 2020

About the author

Joe Meno is a fiction writer and playwright who lives in Chicago. A winner of the Nelson Algren Literary Award, the Great Lakes Book Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Society of Midland Author's Fiction Prize, and a finalist for the Story Prize, he is the author of seven novels and two short story collections. He is also the editor of Chicago Noir: The Classics. A long-time contributor to the seminal culture magazine, Punk Planet, his other non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times and Chicago magazine. He is a professor in the Department of Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago.

Reviews

[Will Byrnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

What do you do when you have nothing left? Nowhere to go? What kind of person are you forced to become?

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...among the cacophony of so many different languages, so many different cultures, the pervading distance, the relentless uncertainty, all of it made clear that so many people from across the world were fleeing their homelands, had chosen to give everything up, under threat of life and limb. What did it say about how the world, how these distinct nations organized themselves? How could so many people be so unhappy as to risk their lives in exchange for a chance of some other way of living? Was the world really that broken?

This is a tale of two desperate men, driven from their homeland by greed and inhumanity, seeking a new life in a new place. But there are no direct flights from the one to the other, not for working class people like Seidu Mohammed and Razak Iyal. Theirs is an odyssey that takes them from Ghana to Brazil, through South and Central America and into the United States, where we first meet them.


Joe Meno - image from Counterpoint

Seidu and Razak had first met each other in a Minneapolis bus station. Out of options in the US, both were determined to cross into Canada, neither knowing much about how to go about it. As they head to the border they must walk the last batch of miles on foot, in the face of a withering winter storm, with sub-zero temperatures and cruel winds, lacking the extra protective clothing anyone would need to survive such an ordeal. It is this life and death struggle which opens the book and to which we return at the end of most chapters. How could anyone survive such conditions? Do they make it? And if either of them does, at what cost?

The bulk of the book is their alternating personal histories and subsequent horror stories. Ever since he was a kid, Seidu had been a gifted footballer. He aspired to play professionally, and did, in Ghana. We follow his career as he steadily moves up to more competitive teams. When offered a chance to try out for a professional Brazilian team, he travels there with his coach. But his life takes a dramatic turn when that coach catches him in bed with a man. This might be a scandal in many countries, but for a Ghanaian, it is life-threatening. Publicly outed as a bisexual, he could be arrested back home, beaten, jailed, maybe even killed. His coach has made it clear that he will broadcast this to everyone in Ghana. Seidu’s career in his home country is over, and probably any hopes for a professional football career anywhere. Thus begins Seidu’s journey.


Seidu Mohammed – image from The Believer

Razak Iyal’s problems were quite different, but no less terrifying. The first son of a man who remarried, having several more children, Razak is denied his inheritance when his father dies. His evil stepmother, incredibly selfish half siblings, indifferent, corrupt police and a corrupt political figure conspire to take what was rightfully his. His half-siblings threaten to kill him if he does not shut up about it. A few murder attempts later Razak flees the country.

Their two stories follow a similar route and tell a similar tale. Both begin their American journey in Brazil, Seidu by happenstance, Razak by virtue of the fact that it was the only county to which he could get a visa. Theirs are horrifying stories of the perils of refugees seeking asylum. They are preyed upon by extortion-minded police and human traffickers in country after country, being repeatedly cheated, robbed, and attacked. The little solace they find comes mostly from fellow emigrants, and only rarely from locals. The misery may take a different form once they cross into the USA, but it is a horror story nonetheless. Both men have a deep religious faith, and turn to the almighty to see them through the worst of their travails, putting their fates in His hands. It looks like God could use a little help.

Over the past thirty years a nearly invisible network of uncoordinated, small-scale smugglers had evolved into a highly organized enterprise. As the tide of migrants traveling to the United States grew throughout the twenty-first century, what was once a low-level, oftentimes family-run operation had become a multibillion-a-year business. Criminal organizations—including transnational drug traffickers—began to use human smuggling as an additional revenue source to support other illicit activities.

The portrait painted here is of an enterprise that preys on the desperate. Not just the human traffickers and the thugs with whom they work, but the police who demand money from the migrants, using their government-sanctioned authority as a weapon against the defenseless. Meno points out that for many living in the communities the migrants traverse, feeding on the frightened and disarmed is among their few sources of income. It reminded me of lions feasting on wildebeests as they make their annual migrations.

There was almost nothing to distinguish one country from another anymore. The sagging palm trees, their long leaves covered in dust; the rough, beige land; the cast-off clothes people wore; all of it was irreducible, continuous, a single continent that time had made plain by poverty. Dilapidated stores with metal bars covering their windows and doors, bleak-looking cell phone shops, travel agencies that appeared to have closed years before, all seemed strangely familiar. Shop after shop, business after business, built around the unending flood of migrants that passed along otherwise empty-seeming streets.

When they finally present themselves to US officials at the border, expecting decent treatment, they are thrust into a proprietary detention system with a very Kafka-esque feel.

Under current UN protocols, anyone who presents themselves at a port of entry or from inside the country can apply for asylum as long as they put forward an application within one year of their arrival.

Thus begins a lengthy period in which they are incarcerated, denied legal assistance, lied to by prison authorities, and are largely cut off from contact with their families.

Since opening in 1994, the Eloy facility has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in profit and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Its existence, and the rapid development of many other private prisons and detention facilities over the past few decades, call into question the ethics of an industry that benefits from an inefficient immigration system. The more migrants who are detained, the longer the length of their detainment, the more these businesses have to gain. At any one time, nearly 40,000 asylum seekers are held in ICE facilities, with more than 70 percent of these individuals being imprisoned in privately run detention centers throughout the country.

This is a non-fiction book written by a writer of fiction. I was totally taken in while reading, even though I knew when I started that this was a work of non-fiction, griping in my notes about how the author had reverted to an expository form at times. Oh, wait. So, you will be engaged. Seidu and Razak are decent people, everyman migrants faced with overwhelming and unfair obstacles. It is hard to read on with dry eyes, both during the darkness of the horrors they endure, and the much rarer bright lights of human empathy.

Sadly, this epic struggle for freedom is a tale as old as humanity, or, in this instance, inhumanity. In bringing us the stories of these two desperate men, Joe Meno, in putting names and faces to the scourge of the global refugee crisis has shined a light on a particularly dark underside of the immigration experience. It is one that poor and working-class immigrants know all too well, but one that will come as a shock to most readers. The contemporary monetization of immigrant struggles has given us an exploitation-fueled Underworld Gauntlet in place of a hope-filled Underground Railroad. As troubling is that there are so many places on this planet where corruption rules, and decency, in order to survive, is forced to hide or flee, fueling the vast human migration we now have. We can only hope that this harsh, moving story can be shared with enough people that public concern will grow, and immigration policy can be moved from the draconian and profit-based to one that promotes a higher valuation of inherent humanity.

This is a dark journey I urge you to make, through one of the outstanding books of 2020. The International Bill of Human Rights states Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. It would be a wonderful, and just thing, if that right were recognized in practice as well as in law, if we could offer more than Mr. Kurtz’s rueful final words in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, “'The horror! The horror!”

Razak recalled the feelings he had faced back in Ghana, unable to negotiate the corrupt bureaucracy, the systems of power that had been put in place. He had traveled thousands of miles only to find, once again, his life beset with obstacles put down by outside forces, controlled by a faceless government. We can send you wherever we want.

Review first posted – May 29, 2020

Publication dates
----------June 2, 2020 - hardcover
----------June 22, 2021 - trade paperback

I received a review copy of this book from Counterpoint. It was welcomed with open arms.

=============================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages

Joe Meno is an award winning novelist, short-fiction and comic-strip writer, playwright, and journalist. He teaches fiction writing at Columbia College in Chicago. Between Everything and Nothing is his tenth book. His latest, a novel, Book of Extraordinary Tragedies, was released in 2022.

By Joe Meno
-----BelieverMag - an excerpt from the book
-----Electric Lit - Pieces by Meno on this site
-----TriQuarterly - Homo Sapiens
-----Goreyesque - The Use of Medicine
-----Selected Shorts - Everything Strange and Unknown - audio – 30:59
-----This Land Magazine - Driver’s Ed

Items of Interest
-----The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
-----The International Bill of Human Rights
-----LitHub-Defining the Ethics of the Writer and Journalist’s Gaze by Spencer Wolff
-----CBC - We can't forget about that night': 1 year later, refugees recall near-fatal Christmas Eve walk across border by Austin Grabish

Razak Iyal, left, and Seidu Mohammed, right, said they want to wish Canadians a happy holiday season and thank everyone who's helped them over the last year in Canada.
- Image and text from the CBC article
-----California Sunday Magazine - “When can we really rest?”
More migrants than ever are crossing the Colombia-Panama border to reach the U.S. Five days inside the Darién Gap, one of the most dangerous journeys in the world by Nadja Drost - Photographs by Carlos Villalón, Bruno Federico, and Lisette Poole

Books of Interest
----- The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad-full text on Gutenberg
-----The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
-----A review of Exit West in The New Yorker - by JiaTolentino
-----The Line Becomes a River

[Montzalee Wittmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Between Everything and Nothing
The Journey of Seidu Mohammed and Razak Iyal and the Quest for Asylum
By: Joe Meno
This is a book I requested from the publisher and the review is voluntary.
This story is so tragic from the very beginning. How the land of their birth betrayed them all the way through the process of trying to get asylum. From the the money hungry cops in Central America, the inhumane and rigged immigration system in America, to finally having to brave the elements to try to get to Canada and everything inbetween. They both would have been killed in their home country and almost died trying to make their way to freedom. It was an emotional trip with these men and an embarrassing one when it came to how they were treated in America. They were not criminals but treated like they were. The difference in how Canada and America treated these men were like day and night! How shameful our system is! So tragic! This really is a must read book!

[Erica · Rating 4 out of 5]

#partner Thank you to @counterpointpress for the free review copy of this book.
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"Over and over again, Razak was forced to confront the same inequities, the same police corruption, the same blunt use of power that he had traveled thousands of miles to escape. Once more he had been rendered voiceless, powerless. Sitting in the dirty cell, it was becoming clearer and clearer to Razak that the West was entirely dependent on the clandestine industry of undocumented immigration and that few people were interested in seeing anything change. It was a secret everyone was aware of but no one was willing to talk about."
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Between Everything and Nothing tells the true story of Seidu Mohammed and Razak Iyal and their journeys from Ghana to America and then eventually Canada to seek asylum. Seidu was under threat by his government since he identifies as bisexual. Razak's family members and a corrupt government official threatened him when he tried to claim his rightful inheritance. Both men suffered immense difficulties and came close to death numerous times as they made their way up to America from Brazil. They both presented themselves at the American border only to be detained in prisons like criminals. This book is shocking. Even though I was aware of many injustices asylum seekers face, I learned so much more about how corrupt our country is to those seeking safety. The story is mixed with facts and history about how our country has handled and is currently handling asylum seekers, refugees, and immigrants. This is a difficult read but I encourage you to read it to understand.
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I do have some critiques of the book to mention. At times the language used felt very overly flowery and out of place. For example: "the feeling of limbic desolation, biblical in its proportions." I don't think it works in a memoir-style book but I think it's because a third person is writing the story. Also, women were not given the right to vote in 1920. WHITE women were given the right. I just needed to correct the author there.
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Overall, I gave this book 4 stars and would recommend it.

[Elena L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

[4,5/5 stars]

BETWEEN EVERYTHING AND NOTHING centers around the journey of two Ghanian asylum seekers - Seidu Mohammed and Razak Iyal- as they hope to build a better life in North America.

This true story is tragic and heartbreaking. From diving into Ghana and following its culture, politics, corruption and social policies, I learned so much about this country and was frequently angered with the injustice and social condemnation. Forced to flee in fear of their lives from their homeland, both embark in a unknown journey starting in Brazil and making their way to North America.

While they go through jungles and cross many borders, they are robbed, attacked, suffered physical afflictions and countlessly bribed the human smugglers/customs officials. I felt their powerlessness and hopelessness against being constantly taken advantage of, plus knowing that everything was opportunity for a potential bribe. During this journey, it was disturbing to read the fact which people were profiting from human suffering to a certain point that I was no longer surprised by the absurdities.

Even being aware of the United States' failing immigration system, I was still shocked by how inhumane and unjust this system is. Meno gives us an in-depth view of the clandestine industry of undocumented immigration in which you are voiceless and have to pay for your freedom. The process of seeking asylum and starting a new life in United States is flaw in showing support and integrating asylum seekers to society. My only critique is that I felt the story repetitive at times, however I knew that it was true to the reality.

This debut is an open book about the struggles of asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants. It was
painful but also delivered the strength and resilience of Seidu and Razak. BETWEEN EVERYTHING AND NOTHING is an insightful and wonderful work of non-fiction that I highly recommend.

[ I received a complimentary copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review]

[Lilly Schmaltz · Rating 5 out of 5]

"You can live in a free country, but you are not truly free unless you have the opportunity and financial means to express that freedom."

Thank you to Counterpoint Press for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Seidu Mohammed and Razak Iyal both endured unimaginable struggles before finally meeting in a Minneapolis bus station. These two men from Ghana began separate, multi-year long journeys as they sought asylum in first, the United States, and finally, Canada. Joe Meno, a novelist and journalist, conducted extensive interviews with the two men to capture their stories and help them share their stories.

I typically don't read non-fiction and wasn't sure what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised when I found myself enthralled with these true accounts that read like a novel. The stories are understandably complex and thought-provoking. The book begins with the men already on their journey to Canada. As they brave below-zero temperatures and the threat of frostbite, their journeys from Ghana to the United States are told. We are given an in-depth view of each man and their families. I immediately felt sympathy for Seidu and Razak and appreciated the chance to gain a deeper understanding of their backgrounds and reasons for fleeing Ghana.

The book could be unsettling at times. This was expected. The men traveled through multiple countries and were continuously faced with corrupt systems working against them. Between having their money and documents stolen, to walking for days on end outside in dangerous jungles, the men and fellow asylum seekers exhibited immense strength and bravery.

Along with the retelling of the men's journeys are short passages detailing what was happening globally regarding immigration. Those moments were welcomed because they gave me context and perspective. It was important to know the statistics of how many asylum seekers were successful and how the changing governments could bring even more challenges.

This was a quick read and truly a page-turner. Again, I had no expectations going in and I am so glad that I read this book. It has offered me a new perspective and insight into the lengths asylum seekers go to find safety in the world. This was a book that rocked my core, and I strongly recommend you read it.

[Lise Embley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A compelling story but I didn’t love the diversions into commentary - applicable as it might have been. The story often left you concerned about where they would get water and food, then jumped ahead without filling in those essentials. The telling of this really powerful story was not satisfying.

That said, the US for-profit incarceration model for both the rightfully convicted as well as the unfortunate migrant is disturbing. We must fix this.

[Ed Schmauder · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sad (true) story about two refugees from Ghana who seek asylum in Trump’s America.

[Tofupup · Rating 4 out of 5]

So many parts of this book gave perspective on the meaning of different ways migration is viewed and treated in many situations and countries. I've come away with a renewed sense that things don't have to be the way they are.

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fine study in how policy changes the lives of individuals. Two men, strangers to each other, flee Ghana in fear of their lives. One runs because he's discovered to be gay, which means mobs can beat him to death or he can be jailed indefinitely. The other runs because he challenges family members and a powerful politician for land that he rightfully inherited. Both start in Brazil and work their way north to the USA where they believe they will receive sanctuary, crossing deadly jungles, getting robbed, bribing police and immigration officers and facing death on multiple occasions. Finally! They (individually) make it to the San Ysidro border checkpoint and present themselves to customs officials. Hallelujah! Of course, they are handcuffed and "detained" (another word for being put in a prison with actual criminals) for 2 years. When they finally are released to live with relatives and make a living, of course their appeals are denied. What to do? Go back to Ghana and die? No. They head to Canada (where housing for asylum seekers is called a "Welcome House," which is almost enough sentimentality to make a Trumper puke). But on the way they meet each other in a Minneapolis bus station and face the worst border crossing of their lives and lose a whole lot (I won't spoil). The book puts a human face on the immigration debate, which good American patriot christians probably won't appreciate. It also touches on the the huge profits involved in the world's refugee issues, from thieves and coyotes to the thieves of the American private prison industry. A fine work of non-fiction storytelling. Thanks to Counterpoint Press for the free copy.

[Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

What if you have to leave the only life you have known because it is now too dangerous to stay. This is an eye opening book about immigration. How hard is it to start a new life where you feel safe. I learned so much about the struggle of immigrants and how the United States treats immigrants. This is an excellent read and I would highly recommend it.

I received this book from #goodreads for an honest review.

[Stefan Wiebe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, what a book, best I've read in some time. Infuriating and tragic in many ways, a powerful read accounting the real life journeys of two asylum seekers, but also representative of countless others.

[Csimplot Simplot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent!!!

[Maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I often think about this book. Arguably the best book I have ever read.

[Roger DeBlanck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seidu Mohammed and Razak Iyal did not know each other in Ghana, but both men eventually had to leave their native country under threat of violence and death. After they left, each held onto the hope of gaining asylum in the United States. Seidu, a talented soccer player, fled due to fear of beating, imprisonment, and possible death due to his bisexual orientation, while Razak, a successful businessman, escaped imminent physical harm and probable death at the hands of vengeful relatives and corrupt elected officials. Meno chronicles the harrowing and unbelievable journeys of these two men across three continents as they seek lives free of danger.

The narrative alternates between the two men’s treacherous border crossing into Canada and each of their struggles over many years to reach that heartbreaking moment of crossing in subzero temperatures. From Brazil and through an assortment of South and Central American countries, Seidu and Razak face hardships of surviving jungles and slums where they experience helplessness against smugglers intent on exploiting them every step of the way. Just when they think their horrors may be over, their entry into the U.S. as asylum seekers only begins years of inhumane and unjust incarceration. Not until the two men meet in Minneapolis do they make the dreaded decision to trek across the Canadian border through waist-high snow and frigid winds. With the U.S. immigration system having failed them, Seidu and Razak find acceptance and the chance at a new life in Canada.

With empathy and compassion, Meno does an exceptional job of charting the separate journeys of both men. He keeps the pace moving rapidly and with drama, which is, of course, all the more heartbreaking because the events are real. Meno’s narrative is also effective with offering facts about immigration. He shares the ICE data that reveals how nearly 85% of immigrants have “non-criminal” backgrounds and pose “no threat.” This fact dispels the falsehood that immigrants are more dangerous than the general American citizenry. Whereas the UK and Canada offer housing, education, and legal counsel to migrants and asylum seekers, the U.S. refuses to assist immigrants and instead chooses to incarcerate them as criminals. In addition, immigration judges in the U.S. work under the influence of the current president, allowing these judges to align with politics and their own predilections.

Meno further makes clear how the U.S. fails immigrants and asylum seekers by making them live in constant fear of deportation, even though these migrants will happily accept jobs that Americans refuse to work. Moreover, he discusses how migrant workers add tremendously to local economies through their buying of goods and paying of taxes, yet they do so without having any legal protection. Meno also shows how immigrants do not take advantage of the welfare system. To the contrary, the facts show that they abide by the law and do not seek handouts. In addition, their taxed wages contribute mightily to Social Security and Medicare. The U.S. government knows the value and dependence of migrant labor on a thriving economy, and still the Trump administration insists on removing migrants and trying to prevent any immigrants from contributing to America.

[Awwawawa Sasasasa · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's an elegantly written social commentary with illumating, on-point yet creatively composed paragraphs, with lots of stunning metaphors, similes, analogies and overall aesthetically pleasing choice of words. The representation of unprivileged communities is impeccable and I could easily sympathize with both protagonists. Unfortunately I could further relate to certain similarities between Ghana and my home country, especially when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights, although not as brutal. It made me more aware of the cruelty behind political institutions, the business of human smuggling, the man-made physical turmoil refugees have to suffer from, then we get hit by a natural disaster who breaks the two survivors even more, a disaster that could've been easily avoided if the world treated immigrants and refugees as humans and not some bags of meat. The prison arc gave me tremendous anxiety and it felt as if I, myself, was held hostage in that cell, treated as a criminal. I enjoyed the descriptive passages of their surroundings and how it subtly paralled their pychology. Well done.


Some quotes that I enjoyed (out of all the 119 that I marked):
"The bare walls held no anwers." (this hits like a truck if you read the whole chapter)
"The nation seemed to be a collision of postcolonial failed state and twentieth-century democracy, an explosive clash of modern politics and age-old traditions, of Western ideals and enduring tribalism, a country of dangerous oftentimes irreconcillable paradoxes."

"You must be willing to become lost in order to become free."

"Their voices, split by the wind, barely carried as far a each other's ears. The land around them was charged with the same palpable feelings of doubt, of uncertainty. It was as if their voices did not belong to them at all, but instead to the void, to the empty climate itself. The question hung in the air for what felt like forever."

"The fear, the past, history drifting away. (...)
Line of footbrints going on, going nowhere.
Ice forming in the corner of their eyes, blurting their sight. A dazzligle futile brilliance. Cold, silent, like the end of time."

[David Hoffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joe Meno's book is a great combination of brilliant narration, deep character development and well-researched insight into the details of the U.S. and Canadian process for handling asylum applications and immigration more broadly. The story is beautifully told, interspersing scenes that give thorough histories of two refugees from their homes in Ghana to Brazil and their long journey north with harrowing detailed scenes of the very last stage of their journey when they almost freeze to death in a snowstorm as they cross into Canada.

The book takes the topic of immigration that is current and important, but often presented from a distance and with numbers, and makes it human and deeply felt. The author deeply researched elements of the immigration process that are hard to learn about -- the private prison industry and the asylum application process. The book peels open the process that the US government has created to manage immigration on the US/Mexico border and makes clear its absurdities and cruelties without rubbing the reader's face in any partisan ideology.

Things that will stick with me from this book:
1) fascinating views of life and politics in Ghana
2) gripping, detailed stories of the journey many migrants take through Central America
3) admiration for the tenacity of the two main characters, Seidu and Razak, and hope for their lives in Canada
4) invaluable insight into the difference in the way Central American countries, Mexico, the United States and Canada handle immigration and what it says about the values of these countries

Highly recommend this book!

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truly upsetting read – but one that should be read. It is the separate story of two immigrants, Seidu and Razak who meet for the final leg of their journey. Both come from Nigeria and have had to leave for different reasons. We follow their separate but similar journeys through South and Central America and then their horrendous experiences in the US. This was in 2016, and as I have seen over and over in articles and books and news reports, bureaucracy has taken over reason and kindness in the US. There were parts of the book that were so upsetting I could not read them! When Seidu and Razak finally arrive in Canada, it is a totally different story. People listen and think and do not just follow procedures. I hope the US can begin to see people as people and to listen and think instead of just having bureaucratic procedures.

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

🌟🌟🌟
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“You must me willing to become lost in order to become free.”
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Between Everything and Nothing chronicles the harrowing journeys of two Ghanaian refugees that flee their home from separate persecution—one for his sexuality, and the other political. They trek separately to South America, and embark on different, but equally daunting, journeys all the way up to the American border where their image of freedom lies. They find themselves trapped in Trump’s immigration nightmare, until they meet by chance while going further north to Canada. Theirs is an incredible story of survival well publicized at the time, but lost to me in the disaster of Trump’s immigration policies. Meno’s telling is a straightforward account, but left me feeling disconnected to these men and their plight. I was expecting more from a novelist whose books I’ve loved, but this true story is one to remember.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommend this one. I learned a lot about the asylum process and current immigration policies. The story of the two Ghanaian asylum seekers, Razak Iyal and Seidu Mohammed, was heartbreaking and eye-opening.

“Over and over again Razak was forced to confront the same inequities, the same police corruption, the same blunt use of power that he had traveled thousands of miles to escape. Once more he had been rendered voiceless, powerless. Sitting in the dirty cell, it became clearer and clearer to Razak that the West was entirely dependent on the clandestine industry of undocumented immigration and that few people were interested in seeing anything change. It was a secret that everyone was aware of but no one was willing to talk about.”

[Abby Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was eye-opening in a way that made my heart drop into my stomach. You hear about the United States’ atrocious immigration policies, but rarely from a first-hand account. As I closed this book, I looked around and saw my privilege literally everywhere. It was as if the wool was pulled from my eyes for just a brief moment, and I saw all the advantages I have from simply being born in the right place at the right time. It’s frightening, sobering, humbling. I even found bias within myself that I probably would have denied being there before reading this book. Incredible and important read.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a depressing account of two Ghanian asylum seekers as they navigate the complex minefields of immigration to gain their personal freedom. The information presented, including that of our current political situation, was sobering and eye-opening.

I'm glad I read it. I'm glad I've seen the light when it comes to this topic. I wish that others, maybe people with more power or more of a voice, would have read it.

This is definitely not a feel-good book, and probably not one to end 2020 on.

Luckily, I have a palate-cleanser lined up...

[Cathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heartbreaking account of two refugees from Ghana. The U.S.'s immigration policy was and is absolutely shameful.
This book picked up at the 50% mark; not to criticize it like it was for entertainment, but the first half is just basic description: he did this, this happened, then this other thing happened. But then the author gets into the gritty debacle that is the US immigration system and I finished within just a few hours; it was riveting.

[Anna Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read just about all of Joe's books and this one, by far is his best. This is a book for people who think our borders should be closed. This is a book for people who don't care kids are being put in cages. This is a book for people who have no idea what it means to apply for asylum in this country. Bravo, Joe. Bravo.

[reemp · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story about two men, but also a story about immigration and refugees as a whole. Reads like a fiction book, but the stories are interlaced with a lot of information about the worldwide economy based on migrants and refugees, and specifically, often based on the extortion of them. A great book to recommend to someone who doesn’t quite understand how important decent refugee programs are.

[Joanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt so ignorant reading this book, but learned lots. Am ashamed of my country's behaviour and hope thing change soon. Brave, strong men - Seid Mohammed & Razak Iyal never gave up, gained their freedom and worked for others.

[Jack Meermans · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mirrored narrative feels a little too monotonous at times. However, the memoir format does a good job of detailing how deplorable the U.S. immigration policies are. In addition to highlighting the DHS and ICE's corruptness.

[Ron Schneider · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a sad story about how cruel our immmigration/ asulym system is. I am ashamed that we can not treat folks who come to the US border more humanely when they present themselves to claim asylum. This is a legal right, and yet we immediately treat them as criminals.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely essential read.

[Miguel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intense story regarding a Ghanaian refugee trying to find refuge in the US by way of working their way north after landing in Brazil. What he experienced along the way was fairly horrifying.

[Laura Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. Well written. Important refuge story - illuminating the extreme difficulties many immigrants face.