This post is by Mikhail Sebastian Okunuga, a coffee connoisseur, world traveler, writer, and memoirist whose work explores statelessness, exile, and the quiet resilience of survival. Drawing from years of displacement and travels across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Pacific—including prolonged immigration detention—his award-winning memoir Stateless in Paradise has received both the International Impact Book Award and The Prestigious International Hope Book Award, honoring its powerful testimony to endurance, dignity, and the human search for belonging.
Stateless
Failed Asylum Seeker Stuck in Samoa
Mikhail Sebastian is an Armenian from Azerbaijan who came to the United States on a Soviet passport in 1995. After the break-up of the U.S.S.R., neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan would take him, and Mr. Sebastian ended up stateless. He filed for asylum in the U.S., but his claim was ultimately denied (in 2002) and he … Read more