EDITOR’S NOTE
This book was created to raise funds to establish libraries in refugee camps in eastern Chad, home to a quarter of a million refugees from neighboring Darfur. Some of the world’s bestselling and most honored authors and poets have contributed their work free of charge so that as much of the book’s proceeds as possible can benefit the refugees. Yet nowhere in their work will you read the word Darfur. Instead, these stories and poems are about wishes. What is the connection?
Darfur is a word that has become associated with genocide, one of the worst evils of mankind. Like Rwanda or Holocaust, it conjures images of war—but more than war, of extreme brutality aimed at destroying an ethnic group. Three hundred thousand people dead. At least two and a half million forced from their homes. Over 3,300 villages destroyed or damaged. Unknown thousands of women and children raped and tortured. This suffering is incomprehensible to most of the world. Even though we want to help, it can be difficult to understand how. What could the people of Darfur wish for that we could actually provide?
In 2003, when the war began, what they wanted was a greater role in their own destiny, in the political and economic life of Darfur. Darfur is a California-sized region of the largest country in Africa, Sudan. It was home to roughly six million people, but they had little say in their own governance. The Sudanese government largely excluded the indigenous ethnic groups of Darfur from decision making. So, in February and March of 2003, after years of being marginalized, two groups of Darfuris, the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, rebelled against the central government. The Sudanese government responded with what the United States, the International Criminal Court, and many others have called genocide. They did not merely fight the rebels; they targeted civilians from the tribes that most supported the rebels. Targeted for annihilation. Using Sudan’s military, and arming rival ethnic groups to form militias called Janjaweed, they burned villages to the ground and terrorized with massacres and sexual violence. Nobody was safe in Darfur, not even the youngest children.
By the end of 2003, 100,000 Darfuris, fearing for their lives in Sudan, had fled across the border into the country of Chad. In doing so, they officially became refugees, people who live outside their home country because they are afraid to return. They are still there. The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, responded to protect these extremely vulnerable people arriving in Chad, one of the least developed countries in the world. They built basic facilities to provide food, water, shelter, medicine, and security in a harsh desert. At first, the top priority of the emergency was just keeping the refugees alive, and doing so strained the resources the international community could muster.
But as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow’s Foreword to this book reveals, even people who are struggling to stay alive and have suffered terrible tragedies have wishes for their future. The young refugee in the Foreword wants to be a doctor and is desperate for the education he knows is his best hope to make that dream come true. He is not alone. Of the 259,162 refugees living in the twelve camps in eastern Chad as of September 2010, 62 percent were under the age of eighteen, and most of them under twelve. The camps are young, filled with 100,000 or more school-age children.
The host country of Chad cannot educate the refugees. By the time most of us have entered the third grade, we have already received more education than the average Chadian adult has in his entire life. So, whatever education these children would receive would have to be provided by UNHCR, in addition to basic lifesaving assistance. With a very limited budget, however, education could not initially be a top priority.
Now, in 2011, there is a greater focus on educating the refugees. Even though international funding is still inadequate, priorities are shifting from emergency response to long-term care. Partly this is because of the stark realization that, eight years into what has been called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, there are still no prospects the refugees will return home.
Some of the reasons it is important to educate the refugees are obvious, and mirror the “stay in school” messages common in the developed world, but others might surprise. UNHCR has said that “education has assumed a critical importance in protecting youth from forced recruitment” by militias active in and around the refugee camps and in protecting girls from very early marriages. Keeping children in school also helps to prevent their abuse as laborers. And thinking about the roots of the crisis, it makes sense that Darfuris particularly want their children to be educated so they can be stronger leaders for Darfur, if they eventually return.
Most primary-school-age refugees are now attending classes in the camps, even if the school facilities are profoundly basic and still inadequate. For older students, though, there are very few opportunities. Where school buildings cannot support the number of students, classes sometimes meet outside on the desert sand in scorching temperatures well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The refugees are eager students. Some have even returned to Darfur, risking their lives, to take graduation exams that will be recognized by the Sudanese government. However, even the strongest desire to learn cannot overcome two basic obstacles facing education in the camps: lack of textbooks and lack of teachers with advanced knowledge. These are areas where our libraries can help.
Without textbooks, and with teachers who might be only a few years more advanced than their students, where can refugee students turn for knowledge? Not the Internet and not television, which they also do not have. A library, containing books on exactly the subjects they are trying to learn, is a practical answer. It can also be a major tool for training teachers, who can share the information contained in library books with their many students.
Helping to educate refugees is a way to fight against the hopelessness of a historic crisis. What has happened in Darfur has caused them to lose so much—their homes, their families, their livelihoods, their health—and even in Chad many have continued to be victimized. In this climate of insecurity, education is one of the few things we can give to refugees that can never be taken away. It is always a step forward, toward their dreams for the future.
Libraries will do much to aid the refugees’ education, especially beyond primary school, but that is not all they can do. If you have ever felt sad and opened a book to escape into another world, you know that reading can have emotional benefits. Imagine how great the need for escape is for the victims of genocide. Many refugee children and women are suffering from deep psychological wounds. Surely they deserve as much as anyone else to enjoy the simple pleasures of reading, if only to experience for precious moments lives that are a little happier.
We cannot say that libraries will resolve the crisis in Darfur or fulfill the wishes of an entire people to return to their homeland, to rebuild, and to live in peace. But each book contains within its pages the possibility of making some refugee’s wishes come true. It might be a book that sets a young student on the path to being the first doctor to return to his village in Darfur. It might be a book that teaches a new trade to support a family. Or it might be a book that allows a mother to see her child experience a normal childhood, if only while reading.
All of the supporters of this book are helping to bring those books to the people of Darfur. When you read on these pages a story or a poem about wishes, think about the wishes of the refugees.
Book Wish Foundation, an all-volunteer 501(c)(3) public charity based in Reston, Virginia, USA, has organized this book and will donate 100 percent of the proceeds it receives to UNHCR to establish libraries in Darfuri refugee camps in eastern Chad. To track the progress of the libraries, to learn more about the Darfur crisis, and to take other actions to aid the refugees, please visit www.bookwish.org and www.unhcr.org.
Logan Kleinwaks,
Co-Founder, Book Wish Foundation
January 25, 2011
SELECTED ONLINE RESOURCES AT BOOKWISH. ORG.
unhcr.org/darfur
UNHCR’s current activities and strategy for helping
; refugees in Chad
ushmm.org/maps/projects/darfur
Satellite imagery and mapping showing the destruction
of villages in Darfur
twitter.com/refugees
UNHCR’s Twitter stream, a daily source for news about refugees
unhcr.org/convention
International treaties that define and provide
legal protection for refugees
miafarrow.org
UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow’s blog
about Darfur and other crises
darfurdreamteam.org
A program connecting U.S. schools with students
in Darfuri refugee camps
unhcr.org/refworld
Up-to-date reports from many sources related to refugee
situations around the world
un.org/en/documents/udhr
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
including the right to education (Article 26)
THE AUTHORS
MEG CABOT Her best-known series, The Princess Diaries, has been published in over 38 countries, winning awards from the American Library Association (Best Books for Young Adults) and a spot on the BBC’s list of the UK’s “100 best-loved novels.” She has written more than 50 books, such as Airhead, Abandon, The Mediator, and the Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls series. Author of romance, comedy, and the paranormal, she has contributed writing for many charitable causes.
JEANNE DuPRAU Best known for her post-apocalyptic series The Books of Ember, of which the first book, The City of Ember, was an American Library Association Notable Book for Children, she is also the author of nonfiction works on such diverse topics as adoption, cloning, and Zen meditation. She has been an English teacher, a writing teacher, an editor, and a technical writer for Apple Computer.
NIKKI GIOVANNI One of America’s most widely read poets, an Oprah Winfrey “Living Legend,” NAACP Image Award winner, and the first to receive the Rosa L. Parks Woman of Courage Award. Author of over 30 books of poetry, children’s books, essays, and a Grammy-finalist poetry album. A prominent voice in the “Black Arts Movement” of the 1960s/70s, she is a distinguished English professor at Virginia Tech and recipient of more than twenty honorary degrees.
JOHN GREEN The New York Times bestselling author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns. He is also the coauthor, with David Levithan, of Will Grayson, Will Grayson. He was 2006 recipient of the Michael L. Printz Award, a 2009 Edgar Award winner, and has twice been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Green’s books have been published in more than a dozen languages.
CORNELIA FUNKE The world’s bestselling book author in the German language, she was one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2005. Her Inkworld trilogy and other books have sold over 100 million copies. Reckless, the first in a new series, is based on her extensive knowledge of central European folktales. Formerly a social worker helping children from difficult backgrounds and a children’s book illustrator, she supports charities that help refugees, victims of torture, and sick and abused children.
KAREN HESSE The winner of a Newbery Medal for Out of the Dust, a free-verse novel set during the Dust Bowl era, she often tackles difficult historical subjects in her books for young readers, such as the Ku Klux Klan (Witness), the Holocaust (The Cats in Krasinski Square), nuclear disaster (Phoenix Rising), and the challenges faced by immigrants (Letters from Rifka). In 2002, she was awarded a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship.
ANN M. MARTIN Her series, The Baby-sitter’s Club, is one of the most successful of all time, having sold more than 175 million copies and spawned many spin-offs. A long-awaited prequel, The Summer Before, was published in 2010. She is the author of many standalone novels, including Everything for a Dog, Belle Teal, and the Newbery Honor—winning A Corner of the Universe, and is the co-author of the Doll People books. Charities she founded, The Lisa Libraries and the Ann M. Martin Foundation, benefit children, arts, education, literacy, and stray and abused animals.
ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH Author of over 80 books, including five ongoing series, most notably The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novels, which are set in Botswana. His books have been translated into 46 languages and he has been the recipient of numerous awards throughout the world. He was previously Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh but now devotes his time to writing.
MARILYN NELSON While Poet Laureate of Connecticut (2001—2006), she founded Soul Mountain Retreat to assist poets from racially or culturally underrepresented groups. A three-time National Book Award finalist (The Homeplace, The Fields of Praise: New And Selected Poems, Carver: A Life in Poems), Newbery Honor winner (Carver: A Life In Poems), and author or translator of over 12 books for young adults and children, she is a professor emerita at the University of Connecticut.
NAOMI SHIHAB NYE Elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2010, she is author or editor of 30 books, including the National Book Award finalist 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East and the Arab American Book Award winner Honeybee: Poems and Short Prose. Her work often draws on her Palestinian-American heritage and intercultural experiences. As the daughter of a refugee, she advocates in many schools internationally for human rights, freedom of expression, and dialogue, instead of war.
JOYCE CAROL OATES A Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University, where she has taught creative writing since 1978, she is among the most prominent and prolific American authors, known especially for her Gothic fiction and social realism. Winner of a National Book Award (them), multiple Pulitzer Prize finalist (Blonde, Black Water,
What I Lived For), master of the short story (two O. Henry Awards, PEN/Malamud Award), noted essayist, poet, and playwright, her more than 56 novels and 32 short story collections include such works for young adults as Freaky Green Eyes, Small Avalanches and Other Stories, and Big Mouth & Ugly Girl.
NATE POWELL Graphic novelist whose Swallow Me Whole won the Eisner Award for Best Original Graphic Novel, the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Artist, and was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist—the first graphic novel to be nominated for the prize in almost 20 years. Also a musician, manager of Harlan Records, and illustrator for record labels, he worked for a decade helping adults with developmental disabilities.
SOFIA QUINTERO Called one of the New School of Activists Most Likely to Change New York by City Lights Magazine, she writes with gritty realism about social issues surrounding race, class, gender, and hip hop culture. Her debut novel for young adults, Efrain’s Secret, chronicles an inner-city teen’s extreme plan to make it into an Ivy League school. She also writes under the name Black Artemis, and co-founded a multimedia production company that produces socially conscious entertainment.
GARY SOTO Recipient of the Hispanic Heritage Foundation’s Literature Award and a National Book Award finalist for his poetry, his work has appeared in over 30 million textbooks. His more than 35 books of poetry, fiction, and short stories include vivid depictions of Mexican-American life. The Gary Soto Literary Museum at Fresno City College houses his writings.
R. L. STINE With more than 300 million books sold, he is among the bestselling authors of all time. His Goosebumps series made the Guinness Book of World Records, and USA Today named him America’s #1 bestselling author three years in a row. Among his many other works is the top teen horror series, Fear Street. A three-time winner of both the Nickelodeon and Disney Adventures Kids’ Choice Awards, he has contributed to and edited anthologies for many charitable causes.
FRANCISCO X. STORK His debut novel, The Way of the Jaguar, was a recipient of the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize. He is also the author of three young adult novels, Behind the Eyes, Marcelo in the Real World (recipient of the ALA’s Schneider Family Award), and The Last Summer of the Death Warriors . He currently works as an attorney for a state agency that develops affordable housing.
CYNTHIA VOIGT Books from her Tillerman Cycle series have
received prestigious awards including the Newbery Medal (Dicey’s Song), Newbery Honor (A Solitary Blue), and German Youth Literature Prize (The Runner). In these, other series such as Bad Girls, and many standalone books for teens and middlegraders, she writes about serious issues such as child abandonment and racism, as well as mystery and fantasy. For her lasting contributions to literature for young adults, she received the Margaret A. Edwards Award in 1995.
JANE YOLEN Called “America’s Hans Christian Andersen” (Newsweek) and the “Aesop of the 20th century” (New York Times) for her children’s fantasy, folklore, and science fiction stories. She has written over 300 books for all ages, including more than 175 children’s picture books, 31 poetry collections, novels, chapter books, songbooks, essays, and plays. Her honors include a Caldecott Medal for Owl Moon, two Nebula Awards for short stories (“Sister Emily’s Lightship” and “Lost Girls”), two Christopher Medals, and the World Fantasy Award.
What You Wish For Page 19