No English, Swahili: Case Notes from Refugee Resettlement (Creative Nonfiction), Ames, IA
The collected essays of No English, Swahili: Case Notes from Refugee Resettlement honor the refugees Awad worked with in resettlement and critiques our broken systems that shut them out.
“I hope my work helps Americans re-envision our broken refugee resettlement system by centering the humanity, dignity, and autonomy of our refugee neighbors.”
Summer Awad is a Palestinian-American essayist, poet, and playwright from Knoxville, Tennessee. She is a second-year MFA candidate in Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State University, where she explores themes of diaspora, race, ethnicity, immigration, migration, and home through multiple genres including poetry, creative nonfiction, and scriptwriting. Her play, “WALLS: A Play for Palestine” was produced at The New York International Fringe Festival in 2016. Her poetry has appeared in Writers Resist, Exposition Review, and Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel: Appalachian Edge, with an essay forthcoming in Chapter 16. She received the 2022 Emerging Writer Award from the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame and the 2016 Artist of Change Award from Community Shares Tennessee.