The main issue Sandra addresses in How Dare the Sun Rise is how ethnic and tribal conflicts have created displaced refugees, and that much of the infrastructure put in place to contend with this problem is inadequate.

The story of Sandra’s family, and its subsequent tragedies, begins with that of her tribe, the Banyamulenge, which has been afflicted by displacement since the Belgian conquest of the Congo in the 1880s. Her tribe’s ostracism made them adept at finding new modes of commerce, particularly cattle farming, but this lifestyle also inured them to instability. For example, the yellow house Sandra grew up in was an abandoned home in which her family squatted. They planned to build a home of their own, but they were never able to accomplish this since they had to flee to a refugee camp. Though Sandra and her family were able to obtain the home they had never had in the Congo after they relocated to Rochester, New York, their newfound stability came with the cost of assimilating to a country and a populace that was largely unprepared to accommodate them. Sandra attended a school in which there were no ESL instructors, leaving her in a standard classroom with an unprepared teacher who inadvertently caused Sandra to feel inadequate and alienated from her peers.