A review by erinmp
Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees by Caroline Moorehead

3.0

I read the hardcover version of this book which, for some reason, is nowhere on here. A very good and detailed look at refugees today. What it means to be a refugee, how a person becomes a refugee, and what other countries are doing about refugees. What was nice about this is that it has a lot of stories about actual refugees--how they came to be refugees and what their lives are like as refugees. And this is what is so heartbreaking. What is worse is that these stories are an unbelievably small fraction of refugees. One thing that I took away from this is that the lives of refugees aren't automatically better if and when they are accepted to new countries--sometimes they are just as bad, but a different kind of bad. The saddest thing that I was aware of before but reinforced to a great degree in the book, is that so many countries don't really understand refugees. They don't or can't comprehend the horrors these people have endured; the lives and families they have had to leave behind; the people close to them killed in front of the survivor. But most countries don't want these people and do everything in their power to refuse them. There must a a huge overhaul in the system and this must happen sooner than later.