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Books Sandwiched In: Virtual Author Talks at Noon

Jake Halpern - Welcome to the New World

Jake Halpern joins us to discuss his graphic novel, Welcome to the New World.

Join us on Zoom using this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88133514309

This event will also stream live on our Facebook page!

For more information, contact Rory Martorana at 203-946-2283 or rmartorana@nhfpl.org.

Jake Halpern is a journalist, bestselling author, and the winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize. Halpern is the author of numerous books including Braving Home, Fame Junkies, Bad Paper, Dormia, and the young adult novel, Nightfall. Many of his books are New York Times bestsellers. As a journalist, Halpern has written for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, The New Republic, Slate, Smithsonian, Entertainment Weekly, Outside, New York Magazine, and other publications.  In the realm of radio, Halpern is a contributor to NPR's All Things Considered and This American Life.  Halpern's hour-long radio story, "Switched at Birth," is on This American Life's "short list" as one of its top eight shows of all time. Halpern is a fellow of Morse College at Yale University, where he teaches a class on journalism.  He recently returned from India where he was visiting as a Fulbright Scholar.  

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Now in a full-length book, the New York Times Pulitzer Prize–winning graphic story of a refugee family who fled the civil war in Syria to make a new life in America

After escaping a Syrian prison, Ibrahim Aldabaan and his family fled the country to seek protection in America. Among the few refugees to receive visas, they finally landed in JFK airport on November 8, 2016, Election Day. The family had reached a safe harbor, but woke up to the world of Donald Trump and a Muslim ban that would sever them from the grandmother, brothers, sisters, and cousins stranded in exile in Jordan.

Welcome to the New World tells the Aldabaans’ story. Resettled in Connecticut with little English, few friends, and even less money, the family of seven strive to create something like home. As a blur of language classes, job-training programs, and the fearsome first days of high school (with hijab) give way to normalcy, the Aldabaans are lulled into a sense of security. A white van cruising slowly past the house prompts some unease, which erupts into full terror when the family receives a death threat and is forced to flee and start all over yet again. The America in which the Aldabaans must make their way is by turns kind and ignorant, generous and cruel, uplifting and heartbreaking.

Delivered with warmth and intimacy, Jake Halpern and Michael Sloan's Welcome to the New World is a wholly original view of the immigrant experience, revealing not only the trials and successes of one family but showing the spirit of a town and a country, for good and bad.