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by Xiaobei Zhao (Author)
This poetry collection emerges from real encounters. Ukrainians who fled the sound of artillery. Syrian mothers nursing infants in foreign corridors. A man who escaped the Taliban and dances as if death had never brushed his neck. An Iranian father who once built bridges and now pulls weeds, saving enough to keep his promises to his daughter. A woman who still carries dignity like a drawn bow, even after war has bent her world out of shape.
Written by a Chinese poet and bar owner living in Germany, these poems are neither political slogans nor sentimental laments. They are acts of attention. They resist reducing human beings to headlines, statistics, or refugee numbers. Instead, they trace the textures of survival: a carefully pressed shirt after a day of cleaning work; a shared drink paid for with quiet pride; an empty swing moving in the wind of memory.
At the heart of this collection lies a simple yet urgent conviction: those who refuse to collapse in the ruins of their former lives deserve to be seen.
Blending documentary sensitivity with lyrical clarity, this book stands at the intersection of migration literature, witness poetry, and contemporary European history. It asks what it means to remember, to record, and to stand beside those rebuilding their dignity in exile.
These poems do not speak for refugees. They sit with them. They listen.
And in listening, they remind us that survival itself is a form of defiance.
