Recognition

NPR, Best Books 2021

Seminary Co-op, Notable Books 2021

The Progressive, Favorite Books 2021

Chicago Public Library, Best Books 2021

Chicago Reader, Best Chicago Books 2021

Chicago Magazine, Best 21st Century Chicago Nonfiction Books

Refugee High:
Coming of Age in America

Winner of the Studs and Ida Terkel Prize

For a century, Chicago’s Roger C. Sullivan High School has been a landing place for migrants. In recent years, it boasts one of the highest proportions of immigrant and refugee students in the country. Students hail from thirty-five different countries and speak more than thirty-eight different languages.

Students cope with poverty, racism, and xenophobia, with overburdened social service organizations and gang turf wars they don’t understand. But above all, they are still teens, flirting, dreaming, and working as they navigate their new life in America. Refugee High is a riveting chronicle of a school year at Sullivan High. Alejandro may be deported just days before he is scheduled to graduate; Shahina narrowly escapes an arranged marriage; and Esengo is shot at the beginning of the school year.

Raising vital questions about what the priorities and values of a public school like Sullivan should be, Refugee High is a vital window into the present-day American immigration and education systems.