Refugee: Poems of El Salvador & Palestine

Refugee: Poems of El Salvador & Palestine by Paul Totah (Author), Najib Joe Hakim (Photographer)

Why combine poems about El Salvador in the 1980s along with works about Palestine spanning several decades? These two parts may seem unrelated, but to the author, they are of the same cloth as they both involve needless wars that result in the deaths of innocent civilians and the creation of refugees seeking safety far from the rubble of their homes.

The first part, “Refugee,” tells the story of Dr. Juan Romagoza Arce, a Salvadoran doctor who was jailed and tortured in his country for his work during the civil war there in the 1980s. The second part of this collection, “Palestine,” touches upon the violence that has devastated that region since the 1948, including the most recent attacks on Gaza that leading human rights groups have called a genocide. The third part of this collection, “Refuge,” recounts the lives of the author's parents and their efforts to make a new home in the San Francisco Bay Area.

This collection asks the reader to consider how we all experience our own sense of being refugees and how we try to find refuge by crafting a home wherever we find ourselves. This duality — of feeling both rootless and rooted, of longing and belonging — is something that may speak to us all. As the U.S. government accelerates its efforts to deport undocumented people in a time when war, climate change, and the rise of authoritarian governments is creating new waves of migrants, we need to offer and a place of refuge and sanctuary.

Publication date: February 20, 2026

Language: English

Pages: 80

ISBN-13: 979-8248687817