In his intro, Viet Thanh Nguyen claims that calling yourself an immigrant “is less controversial, less demanding, and less threatening” than calling yourself a refugee. He must have written those words without considering Donald Trump, who makes no fine distinctions. A few of the writers Nguyen assembled for his essay collection, The Displaced, address Trump directly. Most are concerned with drawing conclusions from their own experience of leaving a homeland and trying to find—or adjust to—a new home. Some make larger points that resonate in the political climate of a nation of immigrants numbering a large population of xenophobes. David Bezmozgis, a Jew who left the Soviet Union as a child, despairs over family members complaining that “Those other refugees—particularly brown and Muslim—are not like them.”
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