Abdo is the author of “American Refuge: True Stories of the Refugee Experience," and spoke at Elon Community Church on Thursday, Sept. 26.
A recent event hosted by the Power + Place Collaborative and Alamance Reads brought the community together to discuss support needed by refugees living in America.
The county-wide book club dialogue featured author Diya Abdo, whose book, “American Refuge: True Stories of the Refugee Experience,” was selected for the Alamance Reads’ community book club. A U.S. immigrant and the daughter of Palestinian refugees, Abdo explores the experiences of seven international refugees in the book.
“The most important factor for refugees is community,” Abdo told about 200 people gathered at Elon Community Church. Her experiences and the stories shared in her book highlight the complex experiences of refugees integrating into new societies and “show how we become part of America, but also invisible in America.”
In addition to Elon University students and faculty, the event included participation from students at Burlington’s Williams High School, local organizations and the broader community. Abdo’s narratives sparked rich discussions around tables, with participants reflecting on her observations and questions.
As the founder of Every Campus A Refuge (ECAR), an initiative that calls on college campuses to offer temporary housing and support for refugee families, Abdo has become a national community engagement and advocacy figure.
“I saw college campuses as a way to call on the pope’s message to create a sanctuary for activism,” Abdo said. Her work with ECAR has earned her several prestigious awards, including the 2021 J.M.K. Innovation Prize, awarded by the J.M. Kaplan Fund to elevate projects in social justice, the environment and heritage conservation.
Abdo’s appearance was part of a larger community initiative supported by the Power + Place Collaborative, which includes the African American Cultural Arts and History Museum, Elon University and the Mayco Bigelow Community Center. The collaborative preserves and shares stories from Alamance County’s Black communities through digital storytelling and archiving oral histories. Students in Elon’s Department of Human Service Studies and Honors Fellows Program collect and share those stories.
By bringing local organizations and educational institutions together, the collaborative aims to foster meaningful connections and dialogue across diverse groups.