Interviewed in 2020 by the New York Times about the effects of COVID-19 on immigrants at a meat-packing plant in South Dakota, Achut Deng worked with children’s book author Keely Hutton to tell her full story in this riveting memoir. Achut was born during a time of political upheaval in southern Sudan in the mid-1980s. After the southern Sudanese split into two factions, violence came close to her home. She was seven the night Nuer soldiers invaded her Dinka village. Fleeing with her grandmother, Koko, and teenage aunt and uncle, she never saw her home again. The second night, Koko died while protecting Achut. Soldiers rescued Achut and the few survivors. Achut, orphaned, became connected with her mother’s good friend Adual, who cared for Achut while they were in a military prison camp. Eventually escaping, Achut, Adual, and a group of women and children made the difficult journey by foot to a refugee camp in Kenya. Years later, after experiencing the death of Adual and the traumas of daily life at the under-resourced camp, Achut was selected to move to the United States, along with a few male family members with whom she was reunited. While under the care of her relatives, Achut was sexually abused and contemplated suicide. With the determination that guided her so many times before, Achut escaped and built a life for herself. Despite a young life full of loss and cruelty, Achut’s visceral and harrowing memoir carries an undercurrent of hope and love. (Age 13 and older)

In this propulsive memoir from Achut Deng and Keely Hutton, inspired by a harrowing New York Times article, Don't Look Back tells a powerful story showing both the ugliness and the beauty of humanity, and the power of not giving up.

I want life.

After a deadly attack in South Sudan left six-year-old Achut Deng without a family, she lived in refugee camps for ten years, until a refugee relocation program gave her the opportunity to move to the United States. When asked why she should be given a chance to leave the camp, Achut simply told the interviewer: I want life.

But the chance at starting a new life in a new country came with a different set of challenges. Some of them equally deadly. Taught by the strong women in her life not to look back, Achut kept moving forward, overcoming one obstacle after another, facing each day with hope and faith in her future. Yet, just as Achut began to think of the US as her home, a tie to her old life resurfaced, and for the first time, she had no choice but to remember her past.