When Kids Make Art, a Richer Story of War Emerges

The Stone Soup Refugee Project Helps Young People Move Beyond Empathy

The sea is stormy, please help me!

My wings are small, please help me!

The butterflies are afraid, please help me!

My world is ignored, please help me!

Parwana Amiri, a poet from Herat Province, Afghanistan, was 16 years old and living in Ritsona, a refugee camp north of Athens, Greece, when she wrote these words. Her poem “Fly With Me” challenges us to look and beckons us to listen. We do. And we feel her desperation, her hope, her anger. But we also anticipate this …

by Laura Moran | April 25, 2023

Our Favorite Essays of 2022

From Behind Prison Walls to a Container Ship Out at Sea to the World’s Largest Refugee Camp, Zócalo’s Contributors Traversed the World to Report on the Human Condition

December 29, 2022

In 2022, Zócalo’s contributors reported from the front lines of a changing world, looking to foster conversation—and curiosity—about the way we live now.

While selecting just 10 essays from the scores …

The Hmong Dolls We Lost, and the Story I Found

I Couldn’t Save These Hand-Sewn Heirlooms From a Fire, But I Could Preserve Their History—And Maybe Even Part of My Heritage

by Jer Xiong | December 8, 2022

The dolls were a seemingly trivial loss in the larger scheme of what went up in smoke when a fire burned through my neighborhood in the summer of 2020.

My family …

What We Miss When We See the Plight of the Refugee

In Bangladesh, the Resettled Rohingya in the World's Largest Refugee Camp Lead Complicated Lives

by Mausumi Mahapatro | October 10, 2022

In 2015, the image of a Syrian child, drowned and washed ashore near the Turkish town of Bodram, went viral. This singular, visceral image of the hapless refugee victim spoke …

What Does the U.S. Owe Climate Refugees?

Central Americans Are Fleeing an Ecological Disaster They Didn't Cause

by Michael B. Smith | October 11, 2021

Last fall, back-to-back major hurricanes, Eta and Iota, slammed into the Caribbean coast of Central America, creating storm surges and flooding from Belize to Panama. In parts of Honduras and …

When San Francisco Tried to Be the World’s ‘Queer Sanctuary’ for Refugees and Asylum Seekers

In the 2010s, the Bay Area Worked to Resettle LGBTQ People Fleeing Persecution—but Then Policies Changed

by Tom Shepard | June 25, 2020

Early one morning in 2012, Subhi Nahas woke up in a hospital bed near Idlib, Syria. The bright, boyishly handsome 22-year-old couldn’t remember how he’d gotten there. The day before, …

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