Journalist and religious scholar Stephanie Saldaña has won a Christopher Award for her book about Catholic, Muslim, and Yazidi refugees from Iraq and Syria.
The big picture: The Christophers, the New York-based nonprofit group that gave out the award, said “What We Remember Will Be Saved: A Story of Refugees and the Things They Carry,” helps us understand “the little things matter a great deal.”
Zoom in: Published in September by Broadleaf Books, Saldaña’s book follows the lives of six people as they seek to save family histories and languages after leaving their homeland.
- Saldaña introduces her readers to Muslim and Yazidi refugees who refused to forget stories of inter-religious friendship, and to a woman who recreated her fallen city of Qaraqosh, Iraq, through artwork on a dress.
- Saldaña spent years traveling to nine countries and conducted dozens of interviews.
- Her book is one of 12 winners of the Christopher Awards, which celebrate authors, illustrators, writers, producers and directors whose work “affirms the highest values of the human spirit.”
Flashback: In an interview with Axios Latino last August, the San Antonio native-turned-Bethlehem resident says she sought to tell the stories of refugees “who are agents of their own stories.”
- “There are over 100 million people who are displaced in the world and the diversity of these stories is as diverse as these 100 million people.”
- She was moved to write about people fleeing violence in Mosul, Iraq, and Aleppo, Syria, because their stories resonated with her own family’s history.
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