— 2017 SUNSHOT BOOK PRIZE FOR NONFICTION —
A gift of truth for a generation of Dreamers, a vault of memories for their parents, and a record of shame, pride, sorrow, humor, and forgotten fact for a nation of immigrants.
One comes away from Human Rights and Wrongs knowing more about motivation, fear, risk-taking, and problem solving than when one began. But more than that, one knows more about the conditions of oppression that force people from all over—Central America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, North Africa—to flee their countries, and the conditions of human support and solidarity that help them rebuild shattered lives.
A broken immigration system that leaves a child in Arizona without parents and a man in El Salvador without children may make one cry. But there’s much to celebrate, too, like positive outcomes in asylum hearings, the beauty of volunteer efforts that ransom a student out of immigration detention, the helicopter rescue of a writer lost in the woods.
Dr. Aron’s book is both instructive and uplifting, and a fierce rebuke to anti-immigrant voices booming across our spacious skies.
