Overview

The aim of the book is to open a window onto the world of people who are forced to escape from their homeland to survive – refugees. The guide to this world is their own words, their stories, their hopes and expectations, and often their despair. I will travel to places that mark stages of the journey and destination of refugees, to meet and to interview them. Taking readers on this journey, from Africa to the Middle East to Europe to the USA, the book will be divided into four sections, each of which could represent journey’s end for the refugees: destination, limbo, return, death.

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9781538118450

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Reviews

"A journalist and director of the International Reconciliation Program for the Jesuit Refugee Services, Vella had unique access to a wide variety of people and uses her correspondent skills to create an engaging, thoughtful collection of intense, firsthand experiences most readers will never have to endure personally. This carefully reported compilation, best taken in small portions, should spark thoughtful discussions about the forces behind displacement and migration, the challenges refugees face, the associated social and political changes to our world, and a sense of a more compassionate and just world we hope to create. Come along and journey with people whose stories will fascinate you, surprise you, uplift you, challenge you, inspire you and break open your heart. Too often refugees seem to be a mass of faceless people or an alarming statistic. But no refugee story is the same because all refugees are unique and beautiful children of God. This moving, sometimes harrowing, new book of stories invites you to see them as your brothers and sisters. An essential book for understanding one of the most pressing challenges of our time. The refugee crisis is, along with the climate emergency, the ethical challenge of our age. To address it adequately we must understand it. That can only be achieved by listening, with humility and respect, to the testimony of those who have risked everything to find safety and hope. This book allows us to take that necessary step. Some of the stories told here are shocking and hard to read. But the cumulative impact of this unique and vital book is profound. Here, at last, we have refugees speaking for themselves, with piercing clarity and dignity. A must-read for anyone who wants to get behind the headlines of the refugee crisis and understand the vulnerable, fragile and fugitive lives which impose on us an inescapable moral responsibility. This book has given a voice to the voiceless, a striking profile to those the modern world would rather dismiss as dematerialized. It mentions the unmentionables and shows that suffering and humiliation and rejection have more claims to be part of the human dimension than comfort and success. The debt by humans to humanity is becoming overwhelming. This is a book entirely in tune with the mission of the Jesuit Refugee Service to serve, to advocate for and to accompany de facto refugees worldwide. The voices in this book represent a truly global reality and their message is the same: human beings express a desire not merely to survive but to live lives worthy of their human capabilities and longings. These longings for peace, security, self-determination, community, family are long recognised as the basic goods of human life by the Catholic social tradition. What Vella manages to do in this book is to find words for what can seem wordless, avoiding the hackneyed or cliched. She has created a text with a single imperative: listen! [Dying to Live] serves as a work of activism, making visible those who too often, through some combination of indifference and design, are kept invisible. . . . it would be an excellent addition to a high school library or the bookshelf of a religious institution. Vella's riveted focus on the lives of actual human beings helps her to maintain moral clarity; she may not go deep into geopolitical context or policy analysis, but her overarching goal is to humanize the consequences, and at that she succeeds brilliantly. An individual's life can change by the moment. Danielle Vella's Dying to Live: Stories from Refugees on the Road to Freedom deconstructs what this means for people fleeing from their homelands. The stories, guided by the author's commentary, awaken the audience to this distinct migrant population. The brave people sharing their stories strive to make sense of their uprooted lives, and the reader confronts the tough decisions they were compelled to make... All these narratives underscore the challenges Vella expresses with writing this powerful, thought-provoking book. Inspired by the Book of Matthew 7:12 and other heartfelt Biblical references, the last chapter ends with an appeal to one narrator's particular belief that ""if people out there know about such stories, they will act to ensure they never happen again"" (179). Vella ends with a stirring appeal to readers to not let him, and others like him, down."

This is a book entirely in tune with the mission of the Jesuit Refugee Service to serve, to advocate for and to accompany de facto refugees worldwide. The voices in this book represent a truly global reality and their message is the same: human beings express a desire not merely to survive but to live lives worthy of their human capabilities and longings. These longings for peace, security, self-determination, community, family are long recognised as the basic goods of human life by the Catholic social tradition. What Vella manages to do in this book is to find words for what can seem wordless, avoiding the hackneyed or cliched. She has created a text with a single imperative: listen!--Anna Rowlands, St Hilda Associate Professor of Catholic Social Thought & Practice, Durham University, UK Come along and journey with people whose stories will fascinate you, surprise you, uplift you, challenge you, inspire you and break open your heart. Too often refugees seem to be a mass of faceless people or an alarming statistic. But no refugee story is the same because all refugees are unique and beautiful children of God. This moving, sometimes harrowing, new book of stories invites you to see them as your brothers and sisters. An essential book for understanding one of the most pressing challenges of our time.--James Martin S.J., author of Jesus: A Pilgrimage and My Life with the Saints This book has given a voice to the voiceless, a striking profile to those the modern world would rather dismiss as dematerialized. It mentions the unmentionables and shows that suffering and humiliation and rejection have more claims to be part of the human dimension than comfort and success. The debt by humans to humanity is becoming overwhelming.--Judge Giovanni Bonello, European Court of Human Rights, 1998 - 2010 The refugee crisis is, along with the climate emergency, the ethical challenge of our age. To address it adequately we must understand it. That can only be achieved by listening, with humility and respect, to the testimony of those who have risked everything to find safety and hope. This book allows us to take that necessary step. Some of the stories told here are shocking and hard to read. But the cumulative impact of this unique and vital book is profound. Here, at last, we have refugees speaking for themselves, with piercing clarity and dignity. A must-read for anyone who wants to get behind the headlines of the refugee crisis and understand the vulnerable, fragile and fugitive lives which impose on us an inescapable moral responsibility.--Julian Coman, Associate Editor of The Guardian

This is a book entirely in tune with the mission of the Jesuit Refugee Service to serve, to advocate for and to accompany de facto refugees worldwide. The voices in this book represent a truly global reality and their message is the same: human beings express a desire not merely to survive but to live lives worthy of their human capabilities and longings. These longings for peace, security, self-determination, community, family are long recognised as the basic goods of human life by the Catholic social tradition. What Vella manages to do in this book is to find words for what can seem wordless, avoiding the hackneyed or cliched. She has created a text with a single imperative: listen!--Anna Rowlands, St Hilda Associate Professor of Catholic Social Thought & Practice, Durham University, UK Come along and journey with people whose stories will fascinate you, surprise you, uplift you, challenge you, inspire you and break open your heart. Too often refugees seem to be a mass of faceless people or an alarming statistic. But no refugee story is the same because all refugees are unique and beautiful children of God. This moving, sometimes harrowing, new book of stories invites you to see them as your brothers and sisters. An essential book for understanding one of the most pressing challenges of our time.--James Martin S.J., author of Jesus: A Pilgrimage and My Life with the Saints This book has given a voice to the voiceless, a striking profile to those the modern world would rather dismiss as dematerialized. It mentions the unmentionables and shows that suffering and humiliation and rejection have more claims to be part of the human dimension than comfort and success. The debt by humans to humanity is becoming overwhelming.--Judge Giovanni Bonello, European Court of Human Rights, 1998 - 2010 The refugee crisis is, along with the climate emergency, the ethical challenge of our age. To address it adequately we must understand it. That can only be achieved by listening, with humility and respect, to the testimony of those who have risked everything to find safety and hope. This book allows us to take that necessary step. Some of the stories told here are shocking and hard to read. But the cumulative impact of this unique and vital book is profound. Here, at last, we have refugees speaking for themselves, with piercing clarity and dignity. A must-read for anyone who wants to get behind the headlines of the refugee crisis and understand the vulnerable, fragile and fugitive lives which impose on us an inescapable moral responsibility.--Julian Coman, Associate Editor of The Guardian A journalist and director of the International Reconciliation Program for the Jesuit Refugee Services, Vella had unique access to a wide variety of people and uses her correspondent skills to create an engaging, thoughtful collection of intense, firsthand experiences most readers will never have to endure personally. This carefully reported compilation, best taken in small portions, should spark thoughtful discussions about the forces behind displacement and migration, the challenges refugees face, the associated social and political changes to our world, and a sense of a more compassionate and just world we hope to create.--Booklist

Author Information

Danielle Vella is mission and identity officer for the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS). A journalist, she has also served as publication coordinator for JRS, editor and writer for the African Jesuit AIDS Network, a reporter for Vatican Radio, and a contributor to The Tablet, Times of Malta, and The Malta Independent. She is based in Malta, Italy, and travels internationally for JRS.

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