Disturbed In Their Nests

A Journey from Sudan’s Dinkaland to San Diego’s City Heights

Available now at bookstores everywhere.

Disturbed In Their Nests wins 2018 Nautilus Gold Award

Multicultural and Indigenous Books

The Nautilus Book Awards for 2018 have just been announced and we are excited and proud to have received the Gold Award for Best Multicultural and Indigenous Book! Read more about the award here, and see our other awards.

What People Are Saying

“‘Disturbed in Their Nests is a strikingly original work…The captivating stories create eyebrow-raising reflections on the nature of suffering, humane obligations to assist one another, sentiments on the weakest members of our collective humanity, the pain and anguish of survival…”

Toyin Falola
author of A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt

OUR IMMIGRANT STORY

SEPTEMBER 16, 2018
by Denise Davidson, San Diego Union Tribune

“There are a few reasons why I wanted to tell this story, but the main one is that everyone has a voice, and you just have to find your voice. This is where my voice is right now.”

— Alephonsion “Alepho” Deng, author, Disturbed in Their Nests

Feature

September 15, 2018

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About the Book

Disturbed In Their Nests

Suburban mom Judy Bernstein had her own assumptions. The teenaged “Lost Boys of Sudan”—who’d traveled barefoot and starving for a thousand miles—needed a little mothering and a change of scenery: a trip to the zoo, perhaps, or maybe the beach.

Partnered through a mentoring program in San Diego, these two individuals from opposite sides of the world began an eye-opening journey that radically altered each other’s vision and life.

Events and Appearances for the book "Disturbed In Their Nests"

New events will be announced soon.

About the Authors

Judy Bernstein

Alepho Deng

Books, Book Club and Teaching Resources

NEW: Photos and a video about two new wells drilled in South Sudan made possible through fundraising by students at Brewster High School! Learn more

Nineteen-year-old refugee, Alephonsion Deng, from war-ravaged Sudan, had great expectations when he arrived in America three weeks before two airlines crashed into the World Trade Towers. Money, he’d been told, was given to you in pillows. Machines did all the work. Education was free.

Suburban mom Judy Bernstein had her own assumptions. The teenaged “Lost Boys of Sudan”—who’d traveled barefoot and starving for a thousand miles—needed a little mothering and a change of scenery: a trip to the zoo, perhaps, or maybe the beach.

Partnered through a mentoring program in San Diego, these two individuals from opposite sides of the world began an eye-opening journey that radically altered each other’s vision and life.

I was fast: that was my gift. If I did something bad, I would run. If something bad happened to me, I would run too. That night all the turmoil broke out, I ran, like my mother had told me….

Five-year-old Benjamin stood in the field tending the goats when the raiders arrived. Moments later, as gunshots, flames, and screams engulfed his village, Benjamin found himself running, as fast as his legs could carry him. In a nearby village, his cousins, seven-year-old Alephonsion and Benson, were driven from their homes as well. Every step led the boys away from their peaceful traditional world where spear-toting fathers protected their huts from the lions that roamed by night. With each footstep they were drawn deeper into the horrific violence of Sudan’s civil war: a world of bombed-out villages, mine-sown roads, and relentless desert, a world where starving adults would snatch the grain from a weak child’s fingers.