Tell Me Why You Fled by Karen O'reilly

Tell Me Why You Fled by Karen O'reilly

Semifinalist for the Kore Press Memoir Award

When Karen O'Reilly's 28-year-old friend and roommate dies by suicide on a bright New Year's Day, Karen, also suffering from severe depression, decides that she needs to do something drastic to avoid following a similar path. Six months later she leaves her comfortable western existence behind to work with refugees in Uganda.

In this candid and irreverent memoir, Karen tells the story of working with people seeking refuge -- from war, and torture, and genocide -- as a young woman seeking refuge from herself. She describes the unexpected connections she makes with the refugees with whom she works: the Somali woman who, pitying her, prays for her to find a husband; the suspected Rwandan g nocidaire who argues with her about soccer and makes her undrinkable coffee; the transgender Burundian woman who commissions a matching rooster-print blouse and skirt for her, as a thank you gift. Outside of work, she tries to forget the corruption and sexual abuse she is shocked to encounter in the humanitarian world. She drinks gin, dances at illicit gay bars, sees local psychiatrists with unorthodox ideas, and tries to make sense of the refugees' stories and her own.

O'Reilly, Karen: - Karen O'Reilly is Professor of Sociology at Loughborough University. She has taught ethnographic and qualitative methods for many years around the world including the Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Collection and Analysis, and the Swiss Summer School in Lugano. She has spent 20 years on and off living among and learning from British people who move abroad in search of a better way of life. Sociologically, this has informed an interest in a broad range of themes, including ethnicity, identity and community; nations and nationalism; home and belonging; social exclusion; the informal economy; tourism-related migration; and friends and networks. Her interests have more recently turned to practice theories and their implications for ethnographic methodology. Karen is author of Ethnographic Methods (Routledge), Key Concepts in Ethnography (SAGE) and International Migration and Social Theory (Palgrave Macmillan), and co-editor of Lifestyle Migration: Expectations, Aspirations and Experiences (Ashgate).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781684333912
ISBN 10	1684333911
Title	Tell Me Why You Fled
Author	Karen O'reilly
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Black Rose Writing
Year published	2019-11-21
Number of pages	224
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.