Of Beetles and Angels: A Boy’s Remarkable Journey from a Refugee Camp to Harvard

Throughout the book, the author employs certain text-based strategies to indicate tone of voice. Haileab’s voice, for example, is written in all-capital letters. Other voices – for example, the anthropomorphized voice of a Sudanese city, in Chapter 1, the voice of habesha elders, in Chapter 2, and the collective voice of habesha refugees, in Chapter 7 – are written in italics. What effect does this produce? Discuss the ways the author uses text-based strategies to invoke meaning.  

Politics are largely absent from this memoir. How does this affect the book, a story about those displaced by larger political issues? What does this authorial choice say about the story that Mawi wishes to tell? 

In Chapter 4, we see the habesha women giving injera bread to Mawi’s family; in Chapter 7, we see Mawi strategizing about how to get the most Halloween candy; and in the bonus material, we are given a few of Tsege’s recipes for habesha food. Food, as a cultural object, appears at various points in the book. How does food help (or hinder) assimilation for Mawi’s family? Aside from nourishment, what purposes do food and cooking serve, particularly for those communities in exile?