Dr. Diya Abdo: Using what we have to create inclusive communities
Written by Dr. Diya Abdo and Alec Kissoondyal
Photo courtesy Dr. Diya Abdo
Dr. Diya Abdo is a Professor of English in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Guilford College in North Carolina. In 2015, she founded Every Campus A Refuge, which houses refugee families on college and university campuses, and provides them with resources to support their resettlement. Dr. Abdo is also the author of the forthcoming book, American Refuge: True Stories of the Refugee Experience.
Background
I’m Palestinian, and I was raised in Jordan. My family is from Jerusalem (in Palestine) and were displaced. My parents’ families were displaced in 1967 and lived as refugees in Jordan for a while. Like many other displaced Palestinians in Jordan, they became Jordanian citizens.
Growing up in Jordan was a wonderful experience. I lived in Amman, the capital, and went to undergraduate school there. I grew up on my grandmother’s stories about Palestine — her connection to Palestine, the importance of the return, and how much she missed being with her family in Palestine.
My understanding and experience of displacement came through the narratives I heard about the loss that was felt being in Jordan, the lack of belonging, and the yearning to go back to Palestine. My grandmother passed away without ever having returned to Palestine, which was painful for all of us to acknowledge.
I came to the United States on an F-1 Visa in 1996 to study American Literature. My experiences in America changed after September 11, 2001. Many people engaged with me differently then, wanting to learn more about Arab and Muslim culture. I found myself interested in answering their questions, so the trajectory of my studies, research and — eventually — expertise shifted to a focus on Arab Women Writers and Arab and Islamic Feminism.
At the same time, I married an American and was in the process of converting my F-1 status to a Green Card, later becoming an American citizen. Then I went back to Jordan to teach.
I taught at a few institutions and published an article. The last institution I taught at didn’t consider the article to be in alignment with their expectations. So, after what I saw as a violation of my academic freedom, I returned to the US and in 2008, I took a job at Guilford college in Greensboro, North Carolina. I’ve been a professor at Guilford ever since.
In 2015, I founded the Every Campus A Refuge (ECAR) program, which has held the majority of my focus for the past few years.
Dr. Diya Abdo’s TEDTalk “Revisioning the University Campus” at Wake Forest University
Every Campus A Refuge
A campus is not a transient place. While our students may attend for four years, they remain connected to the institution in many ways. A college campus, unlike many other organizations, builds networks and connections that stand through time.
In my TEDTalk, I describe the college or university campus as a body. It is a material location where things can happen. It isn’t just an intellectual space where we can learn things, but a place where we can do things. A college campus is also like a city, and depending on the culture of the campus it can be a reflection of a certain kind of cityscape or city ethos that might be community-based or exclusive.
The idea that we can leverage resources that are needed by people from cities and imagine colleges and universities as microcosms of these cities allows us to expand our understanding of where we can get resources. For me, the problem was that we always imagine campuses as accessible to only certain people; but if we think of campuses as cities, their resources should be accessible to everybody, including newcomers.
Tapping into resources
Many newcomers to the US are at a disadvantage when they first arrive. They have limited financial resources and they don’t have the mechanisms through which they can quickly find housing. They don’t have social security numbers, credit history or pay stubs that allow them to rent, and so they have to settle for whatever the housing agency is able to get them.
A newcomer family needs a softer landing and a stronger beginning. They need to arrive and feel like they have enough space to settle, breathe, and build up enough wealth to decide where to live. To that end, ECAR started with housing.
I went to the Guilford College president and asked if I could have a house for the project, which she approved. Then it became a question of who on campus could be involved in this community support effort. We did a lot of informational meetings and calls to action. We leveraged our student clubs and organizations because they were all based on some sort of skill, whether that was gardening, soccer, or yoga. When people needed to write resumes, we reached out to our career services. When folks needed to exercise, we reached out to our gym. Our language departments assisted with interpretation, our libraries with tech orientation, and our cafeteria with food.
We’re talking about people who want and need so many things that we can provide support for on a campus. ECAR is about creating an ecosystem out of all these possible resources. If you identify a need, you can find the assets to fulfill it. Campuses are incredibly diverse and resource rich.
American Refuge: True Stories of the Refugee Experience
Cover of Dr. Diya Abdo’s book “American Refuge: True Stories of the Refugee Experience”
Recently, a publisher reached out and asked if I could write a book about refugees and immigrants and left it up to me to write the book I wanted to write. I wanted this book to highlight the personal areas without neglecting the shared community experience, and to be informative.
At Guilford, I teach about forced migration, and whenever I look at immigrant narratives it’s challenging for me to find something that represents the holistic experience of someone who was living a life before they came seeking sanctuary and refuge. There aren’t many narratives that capture that spectrum of the before, the moment of rupture, the life in a refugee camp, the journey to a resettlement site, and resettlement and post-resettlement process. I wanted to capture the breadth and depth of that experience through personal narratives.
I also wanted to write a book that didn’t pander to the spectacle of tragedy. When you teach what I teach — literature by and about black and brown people — the literature that tends to be popular is literature that creates a spectacle of tragic things. I wanted narratives that were grounded in dignity, that avoided the spectacle of tragedy, that told things plainly and in ways that were personal, but also didn’t make the characters pitiable creatures. I wanted a narrative that was grounded in dignity and agency, but one that was also informative. There is a chapter at the end of the book that gives an A-to-Z of the refugee resettlement landscape of this country.
I write in a vignette style because I like to capture someone in a particular moment of their life. I appreciate the small moments that make things memorable. A small interaction, something you see on the street that sticks with you, or a unique smell or meal. There are small but meaningful moments that I dwell on, and I like to tease out the intricacies and sensory layers of those moments.
I’m also a native Arabic speaker, and I like to play with language and infuse Arabic with English. There’s a repetition in writing that I like to attend to because it’s connected to memory, and these narratives are about remembering and not forgetting. There’s also a pain in memory, because if you’re a refugee, you’re forced to remember things that justify your refugee status.
The book contains the stories of my mother, my grandmother, and six individuals who participated in the ECAR program at Guilford College. I interviewed them for this book so they could choose what to share and what not to share. I recorded the interviews and crafted the stories from the recordings, so the stories carry the cadence and style of the interviewee. In many ways, the stories are reflections of what they said and how they wanted their stories told.
Dr. Diya Abdo’s book “American Refuge: True Stories of the Refugee Experience” is now available for pre-order on Penguin Random House.
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