Home of the Brave: Real Stories of Courage

By Fran Withrow 10.2020 

In “After the Last Border,” author Jessica Goudeau shares the real life accounts of two women who seek to escape civil war, persecution, and violence in their home countries. It is a riveting story that mesmerized me for days and interrupted my sleep. I could not stop thinking about people whose daily lives are fraught with such danger.

 Mu Naw spends most of her life in refugee camps, fleeing persecution in Myanmar, before she and her family are able to come the United States and settle in Austin, Texas. (Refugee camp life is harsh, and I was shocked to learn that the average amount of time people spend there is a mind-numbing twenty-six years.)

 Goudeau’s description of Mu Naw’s first few weeks in our country is heartrending. Their apartment lacks basic necessities, and they do not know how to work the air conditioner. But Mu Naw is incredibly resilient and eventually crafts a life for herself here, a difficult process that takes years.

 In Syria, Hansa and her husband have five living children, are well off, and enjoy a warm family life before civil war turns everything upside down. People are tortured and killed. Bombs fall. Residents flee. Like Mu Naw, Hansa comes to Austin with her husband and youngest daughter. She leaves her beautiful Syrian home reluctantly, feeling she has no other choice. Authorities assure her the rest of her family can join her when their paperwork is completed since the U.S. supports family reunification. She, her husband (who has been severely injured during a bombing) and her daughter find themselves in a small apartment, very different from the comfortable home they left behind. Hansa, who did not have a job in Syria, enters the work force but struggles to pay the rent. She is the sole breadwinner since her youngest daughter is in high school and her husband is disabled.

When Trump is elected president, his policy disrupts the plans of immigrants from certain countries who are preparing to come to America, even those who already have family here. Hansa’s children are among those affected. She does not know if she will ever see them again. Because family is so important to her, she wrestles with depression, guilt, and sorrow.

Goudeau blends the stories of these two women with descriptions of how American immigration policy has changed over the last several decades. The United States has at times truly been a refuge for those seeking safety, but not always. I was not aware that our country had turned away a boatload of refugees from Hungary during World War II. And of course our current policy is not exactly welcoming.

Goudeau explains that refugee life can create such complex trauma for the parents that the DNA of their children is altered. The thought of people dealing with that kind of terror haunts me. What courage it must take to leave the only culture one has ever known and start over again in a strange land.
Mu Naw and Hansa are women of incredible strength. The very least we can do, then, is to listen to their stories.