- 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.