Accidental sisters : refugee women struggling together for a new American dream

Accidental Sisters follows the lives of five refugee women in Houston, Texas, an epicenter of refugee resettlement, as they make their way through a yearlong program for struggling single mother refugees overseen by Alia Altikrity, herself a former refugee from Iraq. Entirely grounded in the words of each of these women--Mina, also from Iraq; Maandi from Sudan; Sara and Zara from Syria; and Elikya from the Democratic Republic of Congo--this book recounts, with deep insight, the lives they lived in their mother countries and the way they were forced to flee with their children into the uncertainty of displacement in neighboring lands. And although it documents the safety and refuge the women eventually find in the new city to which they have been permanently resettled, it critiques the insistence of the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program on rapid self-sufficiency and offers an alternative vision of the American Dream, one grounded in a sisterhood of mutual care for one another--