We Are the Future: Poems with a Voice for Peace

Two open hands on the cover of this large-scale, welcoming volume—celebrating the eighth year of the Stories of Arrival: Refugee and Immigrant Youth Voices Poetry Project—have kept this book front and center on my desk for months. It’s a warmly openhearted, richly illustrated collection of young voices dreaming, remembering, yearning, connecting: from Somalia, Eritrea, the Philippines, Iraq, Mexico—all speaking truth. John Fox, founder of the Institute for Poetic Medicine, wrote about this collection: “These pages, infused with grit and innocence, trauma and truth, color and the sheer aliveness of these immigrant and refugee youth, offer me everything real and hopeful.” Poet Tess Gallagher says, “I took nourishment here. I drank down their words as at a deep, never empty well!” This book carries readers to the source of poetry, and a collective need for care and remembrance. Deep images of love for country, Earth, and personal experience link these speakers. A question I used to ask in poetry workshops was, “How does poetry serve you? What is it doing for you?” Here we find the remembrance and acknowledgement itself helping to create identity and pride. Nguyen Ho, age 17, from Vietnam, writes: “I miss my class, my land, my relatives/ and the city that raised me up.” The editors are to be praised for their deep commitment to this project of encouragement. This beautiful book is a must-have for every high school, community, and ESL class, where wondrous human beings from the wider world have come to reside.