A Guilford College professor’s book on refugees living in Greensboro is in the running to be selected for a statewide book club’s reads for next year, but it needs your help to make the list.

Diya Abdo’s American Refuge: True Stories of The Refugee Experience is one of 24 books selected by North Carolina Reads, an annual reading program sponsored by North Carolina Humanities. The group is asking Tar Heels to vote on five books they want to include on the group’s North Carolina Reads 2024 reading list. You can vote here.

Diya says she feels “incredibly proud and really, really happy” to be included on the list.

American Refuge, which was released last year, tells the stories of several refugees who now call Greensboro home.

It's a book about the spectrum of the refugee experience – leaving loved homes, the conflict that necessitates flight across a border, life in a refugee camp, and then the journey to and resettlement in North Carolina -- grounded in the personal stories of New North Carolinians from Palestine, Burundi, Iraq, Syria, Burma, and Uganda.

Diya says the forced displacement of refugees “is one of the most pressing global crises of our time.”

North Carolina Humanities, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, is the leading nonprofit organization charged with advancing public access to and support for the humanities across the state.

In 2022, the organization launched North Carolina Reads, a statewide program in which participants read and discuss five books dealing with issues and concerns that face North Carolina residents.