My City Was a Sparkling Jewel: Voices of Newcomer Youth from Afghanistan is the latest installment of our youth voices series that includes the journeys of nineteen young men and eleven young women whose lives were all radically disrupted by the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021.
Their stories share the challenges faced, opportunities grasped, and dreams these youth had, and still have, for themselves, and for the families and friends they left behind.
While the future of Afghanistan and its youth in the United States is still uncertain, these first-person stories illuminate the harrowing contours of the unjust displacement these young people experienced and bear witness to the early days of their resettlement in the United States.
Using a trauma-informed approach to storytelling, Green Card Voices and its partners from diasporic Afghanistan, carefully collected first-person accounts of the diverse journeys of nineteen young men and eleven young women on their path to resettling in Minnesota. These stories were gathered at the speed of trust using a mix of handwritten essays and oral storytelling in English, Dari/Farsi, and Pashto. My City Was a Sparkling Jewel: Voices of Newcomer Youth from Afghanistan shares the challenges faced, opportunities grasped, and dreams these youth had, and still have, for themselves, and for the families and friends they left behind. The storytellers, ages fifteen to twenty, come from various ethnic groups—Pashtun, Hazara, Pashai, Tajik—so their stories detail a wide range of experiences. While the future of Afghanistan and its youth in the United States is still uncertain, these first-person stories illuminate the harrowing contours of the unjust displacement these young people experienced and bear witness to the early days of their resettlement in the United States.
Book includes:
30 illustrated portraits
Foreword by Nadia Hashimi, Author of International Best-Seller “The Pearl that Broke its Shell”
Introduction by Arash Yousufi