A01=Sarah Bishop
Author_Sarah Bishop
Category=JBFH
Category=JPQB
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
political science
social science
Product details
- ISBN 9780231204088
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 16 Aug 2022
- Publisher: Columbia University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Winner, 2023 OHA Book Award, Oral History Association
A young woman flees violence in Mexico and seeks protection in the United States—only to be trafficked as a domestic worker in the Bronx. A decorated immigration judge leaves his post when the policies he proudly upheld capsize in the wake of political turmoil. A Gambian translator who was granted asylum herself talks with other African women about how immigration officers expect victims of torture to behave. A border patrol officer begins to question the training that instructs him to treat the children he finds in the Arizona desert like criminals.
Through these and other powerful firsthand accounts, A Story to Save Your Life offers new insight into the harrowing realities of seeking protection in the United States. Sarah C. Bishop argues that cultural differences in communication shape every stage of the asylum process, playing a major but unexamined role. Migrants fleeing persecution must reconstruct the details of their lives so governmental authorities can determine whether their experiences justify protection. However, Bishop shows, many factors influence whether an applicant is perceived as credible, from the effects of trauma on the ability to recount an experience chronologically to culturally rooted nonverbal behaviors and displays of emotion. For asylum seekers, harnessing the power of autobiographical storytelling can mean the difference between life and death. A Story to Save Your Life emphasizes how memory, communication, and culture intertwine in migrants’ search for safety.
A young woman flees violence in Mexico and seeks protection in the United States—only to be trafficked as a domestic worker in the Bronx. A decorated immigration judge leaves his post when the policies he proudly upheld capsize in the wake of political turmoil. A Gambian translator who was granted asylum herself talks with other African women about how immigration officers expect victims of torture to behave. A border patrol officer begins to question the training that instructs him to treat the children he finds in the Arizona desert like criminals.
Through these and other powerful firsthand accounts, A Story to Save Your Life offers new insight into the harrowing realities of seeking protection in the United States. Sarah C. Bishop argues that cultural differences in communication shape every stage of the asylum process, playing a major but unexamined role. Migrants fleeing persecution must reconstruct the details of their lives so governmental authorities can determine whether their experiences justify protection. However, Bishop shows, many factors influence whether an applicant is perceived as credible, from the effects of trauma on the ability to recount an experience chronologically to culturally rooted nonverbal behaviors and displays of emotion. For asylum seekers, harnessing the power of autobiographical storytelling can mean the difference between life and death. A Story to Save Your Life emphasizes how memory, communication, and culture intertwine in migrants’ search for safety.
Sarah C. Bishop is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Baruch College, City University of New York. She is on the board of directors of Mixteca Organization, a nonprofit that supports immigrant communities in Brooklyn, and she serves as an expert witness in U.S. asylum hearings. She is the author of Undocumented Storytellers: Narrating the Immigrant Rights Movement (2019) and U.S. Media and Migration: Refugee Oral Histories (2016).
