SUSAN HARTMAN ON CITY OF REFUGEES

Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI Radio in New York

For over 20 years, Journalist Susan Hartman has been writing intimate stories about immigrants and their communities. Her book, City of Refugees, the Story of Three Newcomers Who Breathed Life into a Dying American Town. Hartman shows how an influx of refugees helped revive Utica, New York, an old upstate manufacturing town that was nearly destroyed by depopulation and arson. According to Susan Hartman Many Americans imagine refugees as threatening outsiders who will steal jobs or be a drain on the economy. But across the country, refugees are rebuilding and maintaining the American Dream. Hartman follows 3 of these newcomers over the course of 8 years as they and their families adjust to new lives in America. Hartman was educated at Kirkland College and received an MFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where she now teaches. She has taught journalism at Yale, NYU, and Barnard College. Join us when Hartman examines City of Refugees is a complex and poignant story of a small city but also of America—a country whose promise of safe harbor and opportunity is knotty and incomplete, but undeniably alive.