Refugees poured into my state. Here’s how it changed me.
![refugees](https://www.allsides.com/sites/default/files/styles/news_large_image/public/1028%20LEWISTON%20gym%20kids%20LEDE.jpg?itok=h_kgaU3g)
Refugees came to rebuild their lives, and rebuilt a town in turn. One Mainer who tracked this former mill town’s yearslong transformation found herself transformed: The native debunked her own biases about the newcomers.
When I was growing up, Lisbon Street in Lewiston was the center of the world. A few times a year, my family drove there from our village 45 miles up the Androscoggin River to shop and to see my great-aunt Nell. She’d moved to the city decades earlier; her husband worked in a mill there. Now...