Category: Oral History

Literary Spotlight: “The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives”

Community, History, Imperialism, Literary World, Literature, Race, Refugees, Oral History

Literary Spotlight: “The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives”

September 23, 2021

By Nithya Rajan

The Displaced is a collection of seventeen short stories by writers who are refugees. Edited by Viet Thanh Nguyen, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer, each story narrates the writers' experiences of displacement from many countries—Việt Nam, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Ukraine, Mexico, Ethiopia, Bosnia, fleeing varied circumstances— genocide, poverty, war, state repression, and civil war, of their journeys through different routes, transit points and destinations; journeys that, as one of the authors, Maaza Mengiste, puts it, “break a human being and rearrange them inside” (135). Together these stories challenge singular narratives about displacement and “of perpetual crisis and suffering” in the Global South (Tshuma, 160).

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Migrant Justice Beyond Borders: Notes on the Collaborative Project “Migrant Connections”

Community, History, Refugees, Digital Connection, Oral History

Migrant Justice Beyond Borders: Notes on the Collaborative Project “Migrant Connections”

February 25, 2021

By Alborz Ghandehari, Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of Utah

Migrant Connections is an oral history project that connects migrant organizers in Greece and students in the “Borders and Migration” course at the University of Utah to share stories of daily life and activism.  You can learn more here: https://migrants.lib.utah.edu

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