The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You

Dina Nayeri (born 1979) published two novels before The Ungrateful Refugee, both in the biographical “autofiction” style she learned in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (227). Both novels draw upon Nayeri’s personal (and sometimes speculative) experience. Each of these works, in addition to her latest work (published in 2020), feature the many underacknowledged complexities of the Iranian refugee plight. Nayeri’s curiosity, activism, and grasp of nuance make her an excellent chronicler of the modern refugee experience.

The Ungrateful Refugee is a response to the creeping, pernicious nationalism in the West. Often alluding to philosophical and religious texts to explain the challenges of asylum and assimilation, Nayeri challenges bureaucratic institutions, nationalist movements like UKIP, and commonplace anti-refugee sentiment. The stories she shares show the physical ordeal of escaping to Europe as well as the agony of systemic barriers. However, Nayeri also explores a personal question of identity: “Am I still a refugee after decades spent transforming” (119)? In her younger years, Nayeri treats her origins as a stigma and aims to distance herself through Western success. However, she still remembers the beauty of Iran: She misses the family members she left behind, laments the loss of her homeland’s delicacies, and calls upon the rigor she developed in the Iranian girls’ school.