5 "unforgettable and immensely important narrative non-fiction" stars !!!

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and Verso Books for an ecopy. I am providing an honest review. This was released April 2020.

The United States has built in, into its deepest foundation, the contradiction of claiming to be the land of the free-of "safe and agreeable Asylum'-and of engaging in the racist persecution of those clambering for freedom. It is a land of selective welcome and outright refusal...

John Washington (who is related to yes that Washington) is a freelance journalist who has written a book of not just critical importance but of cruelties and injustices that continue to be perpetuated by powerful nation states and exploitive corporate interests. The focus here is on asylum seekers from Central America. The man we get to know best is Arnovis from El Salvador. Poor, hardworking, a family man and extremely loving father. He accidently hits a gang member in the face while playing soccer and refuses to join another gang. His life and his family are at risk. He attempts asylum in the USA three times and is thrown back to the wolves. The coyotes, the hardships, the anxieties, the unrelenting humiliations....

Peppered throughout this book are philosophical discussions, political discourses, anthropological research and the use of policy to close the gates, to throw people back into extremely dangerous positions all in the name of Western safety... Mr. Washington also introduces to other migrants, asylum seekers and their experiences in their home cities and their treatments in detention centres and prisons. Extorted by gangs and narcos in their home countries and then dehumanized and humiliated by USA officials....the nightmares never stop.

We are also given a worldview of hundreds of millions of displaced people in the world who drown at sea, die in refugee camps, tortured in jail.....

The work is not only illuminating and important but clearly and beautifully written.

Mr. Washington calls for the humanity in us to offer comfort and shelter as we can not depend on our nation states to be just or empathic.....

A work I will never forget. Thank you Mr. Washington for your compassion and your consciousness raising....

In The Dispossessed, Washington tells the story of Arnovis and the thousands of other migrants in Central America and around the world, as they seek asylum in the US. He approached the subject from all angles - personal, historical, legal, philosophical, environmental, artistic. This book shines a bright, bright light on the inhumanity inherent in our current system, the many ways in which the US and the world in general fail the people who most need support, treating them with cruelty if acknowledging them at all. While much of what Washington covers anyone who follows the news would know, The Dispossessed dives deeper, tying together many threads to paint a picture of exactly how twisted government policy is when it comes to asylum seekers and refugees.