Ban Vinai: The Refugee Camp
- Book Review,
by Lynellyn D. Long
From School Library Journal
YA-- Long set out with a tape recorder in hand to become an ethnographer, chronicling the lives of residents of Ban Vanai, a refugee camp in Thailand. She resists the urge to editorialize, romanticize, or emotionalize the struggles she sees around her, instead allowing the people to tell their own stories, through conversation. What emerges is a moving picture of human beings suspended in time: homeless, countryless, and equipped with varying degrees of survival tactics. These people become close to readers as their personalities, hopes, and setbacks in reaching a homeland unfold; drama is found in the everyday details of staying alive. The book is also a history of the attempts and frustrations of refugee workers to help alleviate suffering and provide dignity to those caught up in the system. A must purchase for schools and public libraries in our multicultural society.- Virginia Ryder, West Potomac High School, Fairfax, VACopyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Book News, Inc.
Beginning in 1975, thousands of families fled the political and economic instability of Laos and Cambodia to refugee camps in Thailand, where many have remained for over a decade. Long (senior technical adviser, Agency for International Development) provides a first-person account of life in a single camp that portrays the daily existence of its Hmong and lowland Lao residents within the broader contours of international refugee policy. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
Book Description
Long documents the reality of daily life in Ban Vinai, a refugee camp in northern Thailand. Based on the author's ethnographic research, the book offers rich narrative description of the lives of the Hmong and lowland Lao refugees and explores the effects of long-term residence in the camp.
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