home of the brave by katherine applegate

The sponsor stops the car, and Kek goes over to the cow. They are the way we know our place in the world.” They are the reason to rise with the sun, to move with the rains, to rest with the stars. As the sponsor drives him to his aunt’s apartment from the airport, he spots an old cow in a field, looking cold and lonely. I especially related to Kek’s need for something to connect him to his home, his “real” home. This story brought to the surface many emotions that I too felt as a child, arriving back in the US: a mix of awe, fear, loneliness, and longing to belong. Kek joins his aunt and his teenage cousin in America, with only his memories of home and family, and hope that his mother is still out there somewhere, to sustain him. His father and brother are dead and his mother is missing. Civil war brought all of his childhood to a screeching halt. His life, back in Sudan, was the simple, nomadic life of the herdsmen, living in huts, with his extended family. Navigating his way around this strange new world seems often overwhelming to a 12 year old.

There he struggles to adjust, not just from the shock of bitter cold, but everything in this Western world: English -“the tangled sounds” they tried to teach him at the refugee camp, modern conveniences like washing machines, toilets, even electricity, a new school and making friends. Kek, a refugee from Sudan, arrives in the US in the dead of winter, to none other than Minnesota. This short novel, written in free verse, had me in it’s grip from the very first page. I just finished reading Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate.

Home of the brave by katherine applegate