We Are Displaced

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | YA | Published in 2018

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Download PDF

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-3

Part 1, Chapters 4-6

Part 2, Introduction and Chapters 7-9

Part 2, Chapters 10-12

Part 2, Chapters 13-15

Part 2, Chapter 16-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Part 2, Chapter 16-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “We Are Displaced”

Chapter 16 Summary: “Ajida: At Nighttime, We Walked”

Ajida informs the reader that she grew up in a small town in Myanmar, previously known as Burma. She and her husband were friends as children and married when she was 15 in what she calls a “love marriage”, rather than an arranged marriage which she says is common in the Rohingya community.

Ajida and her family awoke to gunfire one night, they knew they should flee, as they heard that the country’s police and military had been terrorizing other Rohingya communities by burning their homes and murdering and raping inhabitants. Ajida and her family fled into the forest, where they waited for the army to leave. After several days they realized that it would still not be safe for them to return, and that everything in their town was destroyed. With no extra food or resources, Ajida, her family, and a few hundred people from her village fled Myanmar through the jungle to neighboring Bangladesh. On their journey, they came across the bodies of other Rohingya people who had been murdered. Ajida attributes these deaths to “Buddhist extremists” who wanted to eliminate the Rohingya, who are predominately Muslim, from the country.

After nine days of walking at night and living off leaves, Ajida and her group arrived in Bangladesh. While Ajida felt relieved to arrive, she was also fearful about what awaited her and her family in the refugee camp. She explains that there was no infrastructure at the camp, and so she and her family were given bamboo poles and a plastic sheet to create a tent shelter. The camp was crowded, since 8,000 Rohingya people fled Myanmar in only one month. Eventually, monsoon season came, and Ajida and the other refugees left this camp for another that was less likely to flood. She laments that it is futile to try to leave the camp, since the Bangladeshi government will not allow refugees to integrate into their society. They do, however, provide them with lentils and rice so they can survive.

Both Ajida and her husband are employed through the nonprofit Love Army, which helps refugees. Ajida makes clay stoves for other families, and her husband is a cleaner. While her children have a learning center at the camp, it is not the same as a school. Ajida asks if the world is aware of the genocide against her people, and if anyone can help her community. She concludes her chapter by expressing sadness that the Bangladesh government wants the Rohingya to go home even though it is still not safe to do so, and she wonders if returning will ever be possible.

Chapter 17 Summary: “Farah: This Was My Story”

Farah remembers her first trip to her homeland, Uganda, as an adult. She reveals that she and her family were forced to leave the country in 1972 when she was only two years old and as a result, she had no memories of her time there. Her parents brought Farah and her sister to Canada, where she grew up. Farah recounts that while her parents were proud to be Ugandan, they did not tell Farah why they needed to leave Uganda until she was an adult.

Growing up in Ontario in the seventies and eighties, Farah and her sister were bullied for their south Asian heritage. Her parents, who spoke six languages, made a concerted effort to only speak English with Farah and her sister to help them integrate into Canadian society. While still practicing their Muslim faith, they also celebrated the same holidays as many other Canadians such as Christmas and Hanukkah to embrace Canadian norms as much as possible.

At Queens University, Farah joined a group of Ugandans who wanted to return to Uganda to agitate against corruption and violence. Her parents were not supportive of this decision, and it prompted them to finally reveal why they had to flee the country. They explained to Farah that in the early seventies, Uganda’s president, Idi Amin, told Asian Ugandans to leave the country within 90 days and took away their citizenship. When Farah’s mother took her jewelry out of her bank two soldiers assaulted her and robbed her, threatening to kill her if she made a complaint. The family quickly fled the country to Canada, where they settled in Ontario.

While Farah’s activist group from university eventually disbanded, she continued to ruminate on what happened to her family and was increasingly angry by the injustice. However, she was focused on her career, and over the years worked for government ministers and the deputy prime minister of Canada. At the age of 36, she had the opportunity to visit Tanzania and Uganda, and, while eager to see her family’s homeland, was also very anxious. She recalls feeling that Uganda was very foreign to her and she felt very shocked and depressed about the poverty most Ugandans coped with. The country did not live up to the descriptions she had heard.

When she returned home, she felt a renewed sense of gratitude to be able to live in Canada, which was mixed with guilt at her good fortune, and anger that Idi Amin had taken so much from her family. Farah reveals that in thinking about her journey she wanted to make a change in her professional life too. She left her job and began working for a nonprofit that supported girls’ education in developing countries, and then launched G(irls)20, her own program devoted to girls’ empowerment. Eventually she was hired to become the CEO of the Malala Fund. Farah concludes her passage by admitting that she continues to have mixed feelings about Uganda including guilt, anxiety, and curiosity, and she remains interested in trying to improve Ugandans’ quality of life.

Epilogue Summary

In the Epilogue of We Are Displaced Malala becomes the narrator and describes her experience of returning to the Swat Valley, Pakistan in 2018. While she found some of Swat to be different than she remembered, particularly because the population there has grown, Yousafzai was also happy to visit familiar landmarks and her old house. She calls the trip “exciting, memorable, beautiful, and haunting” for her and her family (Location 1441). The author expresses how lucky she felt to be able to briefly return home, and notes that the other displaced women who contributed to this book do not have that choice.

Yousafzai reveals that while she continues to live in the UK, she still feels that Pakistan is her country, and she is passionate about improving access to education there. Her nonprofit, the Malala Fund, has invested in girls’ education and it is her dream that all Pakistani children are able to enjoy a quality elementary and high school experience. She ends by explaining that since she had her choices taken from her at an early age, she feels strongly that she will use the choices she presently has to support the other 68.5 million displaced people in the world today.

Part 2, Chapter 16-Epilogue Analysis

These passages build on the book’s theme of civilian experiences in conflict while also adding nuance to the book’s exploration of people’s experience of displacement, including homesickness and personal identity. Like many of contributors, Ajida and her family had to flee at night with little ability to plan their journey or take belongings with them. She explains that they could hear the military begin their attack and they decided to flee. She writes, “We grabbed our children and ran into the forest, lucky to escape” (Location 1253). Ajida and her family did not have any material resources, and like many civilians, did not have reliable information about the ongoing situation. As such they were unsure of how far to flee and if they could ever return home. She explains, “We stayed in the forest for several days. […] Then we learned that the army had not left the area. We knew if we returned to our village, they would kill all of us” (Location 1253).

In Farah’s testimonial, she explores the way that her family’s sudden displacement from Uganda left her with a hybrid identity growing up. While she felt connected to her Ugandan roots and curious about her family’s life there, she did not remember living there. However, she did not always feel welcome in her Canadian community either. Farah recalls being bullied in Canada due to her South Asian heritage, which hurt and confused her. For example, someone told her to “go back home”, and in another incident she and her sister were called “pigs” by another local kid, though her father told them it meant “pretty intelligent girls” (Location 1321). Farah shares that despite some of the challenges of moving to Canada, her parents raised her to understand that she was lucky to live there (Location 1339). While Farah did not have any concrete memories of living in Uganda, she admits that “the older I got, the angrier I got” about the injustice of her family’s exclusion from their home country (Location 1370). Visiting Uganda as an adult only added to the complicated mix of emotions Farah already felt, reinforcing her feelings of gratitude to be Canadian while also prompting her to rededicate herself to supporting Ugandans.

Yousafzai’s trip back to Mingora also prompted a mix of emotions and an exploration of how her family’s identities shifted. She admits that even after living in England for years, she remains homesick for “the sounds and smells of Mingora I had known but hadn’t always appreciated” (Location 1419). She notes that when she returned to the Swat Valley, it was “both foreign and familiar” to her, but that she still considers it home (Location 1431). Like Farah, Yousafzai also ends her Epilogue by making the connections from her past displacement to her present life as an activist. This passage shows how many displaced people continue to work through feelings of homesickness and their changing sense of identity long after their initial exile.