Book Review

Belonging. A powerful word. Just reading “belonging” can stir up strong emotions. There may be no greater comfort than feeling valued within one’s country, community, or family. But what happens when people don’t feel at home in their environments or even in their own skin? When they can’t find their physical or emotional place?

Such are the questions explored in Displaced Persons, Joan Leegant’s deeply thoughtful, thoroughly engaging collection of short stories about people in transition trying to discover where they belong. These are not easy stories. Leegant’s complex characters deal with difficult, complicated problems. Yet we immediately feel we are in good hands, as Leegant’s writing is fresh and vibrant, filled with insight, and often sprinkled with delicious dashes of humor.

The book is divided into two sections: East and West. All East stories take place in Israel and provide illuminating glimpses into Israeli life during times of relative peace. The stories in the West offer equally enlightening snippets of life in the United States. While many of the characters in the East struggle to navigate displacement of a physical nature, Leegant’s main interest is on the accompanying psychological and emotional fallout. In “The Baghdadi,” the opening story, we are introduced to several people in physical exile, including Murad, a persistent Israeli Jew born in Iraq, and the narrator, a visiting professor from the U.S. The story begins with a brief introduction of Murad: “He was born in Baghdad and had come to Israel in 1962. But he was not one of those gung-ho Israelis who thought all Jews should live there, he said. Only those who had nowhere else to go.” When he invites the narrator for a cup of coffee, she assesses him, and then her own situation:

I looked up. He was not attractive. Short, stocky, sixty-three, sixty-five. I hadn’t come to the country for encounters with novel and picturesque fellow Jews from all over the world . . .  I was there because I needed a break from the dreaded winter in Boston and because my husband had left in July to take up with a dancer from Moldova who was twenty-six years younger than him. Than me. And because I hated the pitying looks I was getting from our friends at home, as if I had contracted polio.

The narrator accepts his invitation, and she and Murad strike up an odd friendship. As they get to know one another, they each discover more about themselves, breaking toxic family cycles, and healing troubled relationships between parents and children.

Culture clashes abound in these stories, and although politics is certainly not a main focus, Leegant is unafraid to consider the political. “Displaced Persons,” the collection’s titular story, examines the plight of refugees with great nuance. While living in Israel, Leegant taught ESL to African refugees, many of whom made the journey from their native countries to Israel on foot. Leegant’s personal experiences undoubtably informed her writing, as the narrator, an American PhD student researching displaced populations in Israel, teaches English to African refugees two nights a week. Here, the narrator reflects on her students—and her project—and in the process exposes the insensitivity of certain types of academic research: “My PhD plan was to write a pithily inclusive chapter about each one, laced with shimmering insights about what it means for thousands of traumatized 21^st century refugees to seek shelter in a country defined by thousands of traumatized refugees of the 20^th, but . . . the thought of reducing their lives to case studies for the purpose of netting me a university degree seems obscene.”

In “Beautiful Souls,” winner of The Colorado Review’s 2011 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction, Leegant dives into the longstanding, uneasy relations between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem’s Old City—and into American naivete around the issue. The story begins with two American teenage girls wandering the Arab shuk alone. The girls had been warned earlier by their progressive, spiritually-seeking parents “to be careful around the men. It’s not because they’re Arab. Of course it’s not. It’s because in some places in the world men are different from what you’re used to . . .” The girls are cold. It’s almost dusk and they are due back at the hotel shortly. But they’re hungry. When they spot a restaurant “down an alley, out of the way, next to a bakery . . .” they enter. The restaurant is nearly empty, and they are the only women there. An incredibly tense situation ensues involving the girls, the family that owns the restaurant, and two Israeli soldiers. Managing a very difficult balance, Leegant never leans to one side or the other. Instead, she sheds light on the high cost to all parties, to everybody’s soul.

The second half of the collection, the West, explores the many ways people struggle with an internal notion of belonging and home. In “Hunters and Gatherers,” for example, we see a mother giving her life over to the care of her twenty-six-year-old son who suffers from debilitating mental illness, even as his care leads to the disintegration of her marriage. Leegant writes with great sensitivity about mental health challenges in this story, as well as in several others, while using illness as a portal to explore family relationships.

Many stories in both sections are multigenerational. We meet several delightfully quirky grandparents, who­, because of their own longstanding displacements, were unable to give to their children what they needed. Yet, they actively cultivate relationships with the next generation that heal them all. The longing for repair—albeit often unconsciously—drives behavior throughout much of the collection. It also acts as an effective and hopeful antidote to internal displacement.

The clear division of the book between East and West sets a tone of seemingly unbridgeable boundaries and provides a terrific example of structure dictating and reflecting content. It seems ironic that a concept such as displacement could function as connective tissue. Yet, Displaced Persons, with its characters in various states of physical or emotional exile, illustrates how connected we all are in our desire to belong. Leegant’s compassion, profound understanding of the human condition, and love of her characters—even those who may not be particularly loveable—shine through each of the stories and are huge strengths of this remarkable collection. It is a true gift when an author’s own empathy expands the reader’s, as Leegant’s did mine. I thank her for it, and I bet you will too.