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With each word, I found myself thinking of my own grandmother’s journey, escaping war to America with no money, no education, and six children, the pain of this experience inevitably hardening the whole family.
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But still: A pattern. The trauma had been diluted by time. But, it was still present, still discernible, in my blood.
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I picked up The Odyssey because I wanted to read about wanders and refugees. A story about a man who takes a decade to get home and is on a quest for safety seemed like a good place to start.
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Viet Than Nguyen discusses his story collection The Refugees, growing up in a Vietnamese community in San Jose in the 1980s, and the power of secondhand memories.
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I ask Hussein if he’s proud of the work he’s doing. He says that he is. We stop talking. For a moment, the market feels like peace.
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Our bodies will not be your banners. We are not yours to use and abuse, we are not yours to dupe. We see through your words, and we see your violence.
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In the face of colossal and destructive political lies, we need a more nuanced understanding of the world than simply truth versus lie.
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Today is the day that Pr*sident Trump shut down the American borders to refugees, green card holders, and non-citizens with paid for and improved visas—if they were from certain “Muslim majority” countries… It is also the day his administration made it clear that, going forward, “Christian” refugees would be given priority over all other refugees—and […]
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The thing I want to talk about is something I’m not in possession of anymore, but of all the things I’ve lost it’s the thing I think about the most.
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Raphael Cormack discusses The Book of Khartoum: A City in Short Fiction, a collection of short stories he co-edited and translated, the editorial process, and the responsibilities that accompany translating writing.
...moreA group of authors in Britain is using the format of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales to raise awareness of the plight of modern-day refugees: They don’t feel safe enough to share their stories themselves … but they have a tremendous frustration at being voiceless. So we came up with the idea of using The Canterbury Tales as a model of journeying and […]
...moreReporter Wolfgang Bauer and photographer Stanislav Krupar went undercover in 2014 to document the Syrian refugee crisis, eventually violating the law in their transport of migrants. Their book Crossing the Sea documents the crisis and humanizes the refugees in a time when the news media often turns a blind eye: What Crossing the Sea does […]
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Kim Brooks discusses her debut novel, The Houseguest, her approach to character and historical narrative, and the value of engaging readers with larger social issues through literature.
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Poet Kathleen Spivack discusses releasing her debut novel Unspeakable Things at age seventy-seven.
...moreMIA’s video for “Borders” is controversial in many ways: it’s full of refugee imagery, MIA rapping in the middle of boats packed with bodies. But its biggest backlash comes from what seems like its least controversial gesture—in some shots, MIA is wearing a shirt with a doctored logo, changing “Fly Emirates” to read “Fly Pirates.” One would think that critiquing […]
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Atossa Araxia Abrahamian on her new book The Cosmopolites, the citizenship market, nearly getting deported in the Comoros, and learning to show up and wait.
...moreThe news that governors are suddenly deciding that they don’t want to welcome Syrian refugees has really driven home to me just how cowardly much of this country is. We talk tough, mind you, but when we’re asked to really open ourselves up to something, we refuse. I’m not talking about the country’s willingness to […]
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Stephen Dau writes from Brussels on the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe, and how average citizens are stepping up to meet the needs that the government cannot.
...moreAt JSTOR Daily, Jon Greenaway revisits Susan Sontag’s writing on photography (specifically in On Photography and Regarding the Pain of Others) through the lens of Europe’s current refugee crisis.
...moreCost of the rubber raft meant to transport the Kurdi family from Turkey to Greece = $4450 Number of Kurdi family members to survive trip = 1 Age of Aylan Kurdi, the youngest family member drowned at sea = 3 years Age of his drowned brother, Ghalib = 5 years Syrian refugees drowned or missing at sea seeking safer […]
...moreFor the Guardian, author Gillian Cross explains how fiction might help people to better understand and empathize with the experience of Syrian refugees: It might seem frivolous to be talking about stories at a time like this. Shouldn’t we be concentrating on the real world? Isn’t fiction soft and sentimental compared with the terrible news we […]
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Author Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses his debut novel, The Sympathizer, new ways of looking at the Vietnam War, and how to blend important ideas with entertainment.
...moreThe Clash are famous for their album London Calling and their ubiquitous single, “Rock the Casbah,” which is notable perhaps for its incendiary political message—a denunciation of the Iranian ban on Western music following the 1979 revolution. But it’s “Straight to Hell,” a commemoration of immigrant struggles in the UK and abroad, that best blends political panache with a strong […]
...moreDadaab is not an oasis. There is no water. In July, food rations are expected to be cut back to 1000 calories a day. The camps are short 38,000 latrines. Every year only twenty students from the entire camp escape to university, the only legitimate way out.
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