“Reserved for Natives”: Alexander Voloshin on the Status of Refugees

The plight of refugees stalks the headlines: devastating wrecks off the coast of Greece, Ukrainian children orphaned and uprooted, often welcomed but sometimes mocked and bespattered by their peers. For those of us who have experienced displacement in the past, such stories bring back painful memories and old fears. I recall my family’s early days in Los Angeles — recall my mother’s struggles to clear the bureaucratic hurdles all immigrants face, as well as the playground bullying to which my friends and I were subjected. One of the chapters in the second part of Alexander Voloshin’s On the Tracks and at Crossroads recounts some of those perennial émigré troubles, applying to them a therapeutic layer of absurdist humor. Laughter was how my friends and I coped with our challenges, too; eventually, those challenges fell away, while we, I’m happy to say, are still laughing.

At this point in his…