People, Just Like You and Me

A few months ago I visited the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. It's one of my favorite museums, and not just because I get in for free. There's just something so vibrant and alive about it: the colors, the people, the history that doesn't feel so faraway as history should. During my visit, I found an exhibit that struck a resonant chord with me.

In the center of the room was a house constructed of some heavy-duty metal and plastic. It looked like someplace a child would play; in fact, some bored kids were running in and out, their parents otherwise engrossed in the photographs lining the black walls.

A map of the world, constructed from different colored electrical wires, circuit boards, and speakers provided a soundtrack to the room. The exhibit was about refugees and the conditions they live in. An entire school is housed in a midsize cardboard box, a five-person family can live comfortably in a 188-square foot emergency temporary shelter. Skinny kids faded into the dismal backdrops of their villages, but their eyes shone bright through the photographic paper and straight in my direction.

And it hit me, in that moment, that these were real people. Parents who scrape together anything they can find for their children, children who want to learn reading and spelling and multiplication. People want to live, not just survive. They're the same as us.

I left the MoMA inspired, and shaken, and ready to take on the world. I was going to find ways to, as a mostly broke college student, fight for these people, get them the food and water and shelter they need and deserve.

People want to live, not just survive. They’re the same as us."

Within a week, I had promptly forgotten everything I had promised myself. Life went on around me, everything moving at a rapid New York clip. There were weddings to attend and exams to ace and friends to meet. There was so little time.

And then I went to the library. I hadn't been all summer, busy with an internship but school started again and left me with a rare hour to browse the stacks and actually read what I had found. I pulled books off the shelves, novels, young adult fiction, and then stumbled upon a collection of short stories by Viet Thanh Nguyen, entitled refugees.

To be honest, I had discovered the book in the spring and wanted to read it back then, too. But I forgot the name of the title and the author before I had a chance to place it on hold. When I found it again, I brought the hardcover home.

And it was amazing. This isn't a book review by any means, but I'd recommend The Refugees in a heartbeat. The eight stories all featured Vietnamese refugees, people fleeing the Vietnam War and the subsequent Communist regime. The author was a refugee himself, arriving with his parents in America at the age of four after the fall of Saigon.

Before starting the book, I had kind of expected eight of the same story, because, really, how different could these people be, all Vietnamese immigrants, actually be?

So different. Mind-blowingly different.

After tearing my way through the pages, I couldn't believe that all of these characters had come from the same place, because each voice was so unique, and each story constructed in almost its own world. And it reminded me of what I had seen in that exhibit almost a year ago– 'refugees' is not enough of a descriptor.

These are people– men and women, gay and straight, full of good qualities and bad– and the only thing they had in common were their heritage, and a need for a helping hand. And once again, I wanted to give it to them. This time, I didn't wait.

The Internet is a beautiful thing. Within seconds, I had found dozens of ways to help, with both my money and my time. Here you have my words, which is a start, but there are petitions to be signed, volunteer opportunities to attend, and donations to be made.

But more than this, I've shifted my perspective. Somehow, I had forgotten that my own grandparents were among the thousands of Jewish refugees who left Europe after miraculously surviving the Holocaust. Their lives were torn apart, and they needed a place to go to begin anew. It's been nearly 75 years since the Holocaust, and somehow, hatred based on race and religion is still rampant.

'Refugees' is not enough of a descriptor."

Right now, I can change myself, and I will. I am. Because refugees are not numbers, not facts and figures that are so large they cease to have any meaning. They are people. They are fathers and sisters and boyfriends and wives and students and athletes and thinkers and dreamers. They will be doctors and poets and business owners and investment bankers and teachers and therapists and dogwalkers and cooks. And right now, they are people.

First and foremost, they are always, always people.

By Caroline