WOW Reads: TRAP Considers Refugee Experiences in Literature

Join the Worlds of Words Center Teen Reading Ambassadors (TRAP) as we discuss the refugee experience in children's literature.

Books mentioned in this episode:
"We Are Displaced" by Malala Yousafzai
"The Unwanted: Stories of the Syrian Refugees" by Don Brown
"Ink Knows No Borders" edited by Patrice Vecchione and Alissa Raymond
"Internment" by Samir Ahmed
"From the Tops of the Trees" by Kao Kalia Yang and Rachel Wada
"To the Other Side" by Erika Meza
"Dounia and the Magic Seeds" by Marya Zarif
"A Star Shines Through" by Anna Desnitskaya
"We Are Not from Here" by Jenny Torres Sanchez

If you would like a copy of our ‘zine response to these books, please send a 6.5 X 9.5 self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE - flat rate for under 2 oz.) to: Worlds of Words Center - TRAP, U of A College of Education, 1430 E Second St, Rm 453, Tucson, AZ 85721

This podcast was recorded in the Digital Innovation and Learning Lab (DIALL) in the U of A College of Education.

Producer/Host: Rebecca Ballenger, Worlds of Words Center Associate Director
Audio Engineer: Alexis Mendoza, Worlds of Words Student Employee and U of A Art Major
Coordinator: Vianey Torres, Worlds of Words Student Employee and U of A Nursing Major
Digital Collaborator: Melanie Reyes, Worlds of Words Student Employee and U of A First-year Student

Today's Podcast Music was made by Nathan LaValley (Royalty Free Bossa Music).

For more information on the WOW Teen Reading Ambassadors (TRAP), visit wowlit.org.

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We Can Promote Global Literature Together!

The Worlds of Words Reading Ambassador program is completely free for participants who receive a book for themselves and a book to share with their school librarian, ELA/English teacher, or other school entity. If you would like to support this program, please make a gift on-line through the University of Arizona Foundation.

Thank you for listening and keep reading!

Transcript

Hello and welcome to WOW Reads, a podcast of Worlds of Words that features middle and high school voices on books written for them. 

Worlds of Words Center of Global Literacies and Literatures is committed to creating an international network of people who share the vision of bringing books and children together, thereby opening windows on the world.

Worlds of Words Reading Ambassadors engage in a university experience of children's literature within the University of Arizona College of Education. Reading ambassadors learn about literature for young people under the direction of faculty and staff with expertise in children's literature, education, library science and marketing. 

We respectfully acknowledge the University of Arizona is on the land and territories of indigenous peoples. Today Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized tribes, with Tucson being home to Tohono O'odham and Yaqui. Committed to diversity and inclusion, the university strives to build sustainable relationships with sovereign native nations and indigenous communities through education offerings, partnership and community service. 

My name is Rebecca Ballenger, I'm the associate director for Worlds of Words, and I'm with the Teen Reading Ambassadors today who have been reading and discussing the refugee experience in literature. 

My name is Wren and one of the books we read is "We Are Displaced" by Malala Yousafzai.

My name is Alba and another book we read was "The Unwanted Stories of the Syrian Refugees" by Don Brown. 

My name is Emma and one of the books we read was "Ink Knows No Borders" edited by Patrice Vecchione and Alissa Raymond. 

I'm Rayla, and one of the books that we read was "Internment" by Samir Ahmed. 

I'm Laine, one of the books we read was "From the Tops of the Trees" by Kao Kalia Yang, illustrated by Rachel Wada and "To the Other Side" by Erika Meza. 

I'm Averi, and some of the books we read were "Dounia and the Magic Seeds" by Marya Zarif and "A Star Shines Through" by Anna Desnitskaya.

I'm Quin, and one of the books we read was "We Are Not from Here" by Jenny Torres Sanchez. 

It's good to be here with everybody and talking about these books. It has been a month since we read and discussed these books, but hopefully you can reach back into your memory and maybe somebody can speak to a little bit about how you felt being introduced to these titles. 

The first thing that I thought when I read the title "The Unwanted Stories of the Syrian Refugees" was kind of that now I wanted to read it because I understood that they were trying to be erased possibly from the title, and so I wanted to figure out what they were. 

I agree, I really liked how it said "The Unwanted" because I think that's a very unique way to title your book, especially when it's nonfiction and it's about real people.

When we had been deciding on our books, one of the things that I was really looking for was a close familial tie or relation throughout it. So in "We Are Not from Here" there's these three kids that are all really close to each other immigrating to the United States. I was interested in seeing how that was going to play out, since them being young and all, and that close with each other. I also really liked the cover art. 

When I saw the title of "We are Displaced" I knew it was exactly what I wanted to read because I wanted to read many stories about many different experiences, many different countries, many different conflicts. Plus, it's written by Malala Yousafzai, who is an amazing person and amazing author, which made me really excited to read it.

Yeah, that reminds me of the title of "Ink Knows No Borders" which when you look at the cover is like a globe but made out of paint splatter. I think that also made me think of a similar story, which is a collection of a bunch of people's stories. 

When I saw "A Star Shines Through" it made me think of how no matter where you are in the world, the stars will always be a constant. At some point, no matter where you are, there's a chance you might see the same stars that you saw and in a completely different place and how that can make you feel at home anywhere. 

So we also were looking at, different genres and ways of presenting the refugee experience. We have poetry, we have graphic novels, we have fiction, we have picture books. Does the way that you read a certain experience help you connect more deeply to the subject matter? 

I think that when I was reading "The Unwanted Stories of the Syrian Refugees" which is a nonfiction graphic novel, I thought that the illustrations that made up the book were really important to the story itself. Because the way that some of the panels would take up the entire page when it was something really important, or they would all be like a certain color, and I thought that it was really striking to look at on the page and definitely contributed to my experience reading the story. 

I feel like with picture books and nonfict- I mean fiction, not nonfiction, you can get a lot more metaphorical and fantastical with what you're trying to express. So in "Dounia and the Magic Seeds" as you can tell by the title, there are magic seeds in it, and they're basically used to represent things from home giving you power to continue on in your journey to a new place, and I think it's really cool how it was represented in this book. 

I agree, I read "The Unwanted" (Stories of the Syrian Refugees) and a few of the picture books, and I know at least in "The Unwanted" the pictures really helped me imagine it and were much more impactful than reading it on a piece of paper. I could see what the refugees went through and it was very quintessential to have that visual image.

In "Internment", the main character, the book is in her point of view and so it's very like impactful to hear her internal struggles throughout all of the experiences that happens to her in the book. 

If you think about what you knew about the refugee experience prior to reading these books and having this conversation and what your perceptions are now, what has been the change over time?

I definitely have looked closer at refugee experiences after reading "The Unwanted Stories of the Syrian Refugees" because it just went very in-depth with the struggles that they faced, and it talked about many things that I did know, but also many things that I didn't know. Those topics were very interesting to me and now whenever I hear of like a refugee story, I imagine more of what the people were going through when they were trying to escape from whatever situation they were from.

When I was looking at "Ink Knows No Borders" I actually, the series of poems allowed me to really have to think about each person's individual experience and what they were trying to say. Sometimes the imagery was just so vivid that I remember it, I think about it more now. It's just it's something that I hadn't had much of an emotional connection to, but I can understand more now.

For me, it was simply the diversity of it. When we think of refugees, oftentimes we think of certain places in the world like Syria or Sudan, but we often forget that refugees can come from anywhere that has violence or displacement. Many characters in the book I read, "We Are Displaced", came from Africa to Asia to South America. In "We Are Not from Here" they came from Guatemala. We often forget that it can happen almost anywhere. 

Not necessarily about violence either. Displacement could be a climate issue, or there can be other things that go on. So one of the things that we decided to do after we read these books is we decided to engage in some reader response, and we are currently creating a 'zine. Does anybody want to talk about that creative process and what you were thinking as you were doing your reflection? 

I created a blackout poem using a page from "We Are Not from Here" and the poem I made was based off of sort of similar to the theme that's explored in "The Unwanted Stories of the Syrian Refugees" where basically it's talking about how a lot of refugees stories get washed away in the world from people just not caring or not wanting to listen and how that can affect people.

I feel like when I read "The Unwanted" I remember there was one story where one of the refugees was named, and it really struck me and that made me realize that refugees, their stories are often told, but people sometimes forget that it's not just a story. That they're real people with names and lives and faces, so I just really wanted to emphasize that.

Mine, "Internment" is more of a dystopian, which means more in the future. When I was reading it, I had realized that it talks about how we didn't really learn much from the past. I then also realized that even after what we've learned so far, they always still tend to have this piece of hope with them. Then I remembered about how the hope just never dies within them, it always comes back and it's always stronger. 

I've really loved how we're able to incorporate all these different stories into our 'zine and all these different perspectives on what we've read. Given that, what I decided to put in my little page of it was actually more of a personal- not personal to me, but personal to a refugee's experience from "Ink Knows No Borders". I was taking one of the poems currently and then using some of that vivid imagery, like the words that they use, taking the metaphorical, and drawing it literally out and making that represent what they're trying to communicate.

My art response was not really just based on the book "Internment", but based on refugees as a whole, and the concept of how people are forced to leave their homes and the journeys that they take and that it should not be okay and is not okay, that people are forced to sleep under stars and not in their homes where they were from because of the violence in somebody else's heart.

My response is also about refugees as a whole, and also is a bit like Albas. For me, when we hear refugees, their stories often get condensed or washed away like, I don't remember who said it, someone said it. But, they often get condensed down to this simple 'A person gets displaced and now all they are is a refugee' The refugees are so much more. They're humans who feel and have feelings and go through different phases, and they will have the same feelings that we do, even if they are in a camp far away from their house and we are in a home. 

What do you hope will happen with the 'zine that we create? 

I just hope that it gets to people and that especially I feel new generations will feel the impact of what generations before us have done and will try to fix it, because I feel like we really need to shed more light on the refugees, not just like the politics in the war, but the people who are suffering the consequences from it. 

I hope that people finally truly understand the stories that actually happen to people. It's not covered up, it's the full truth, what's actually happening to them and what did happen. 

I hope that people are willing to actually listen to firsthand stories from refugees and not just judge them for being different.

I'm really hoping that the 'zine ends up capturing what we want to put forth about refugee experiences into it. I hope it gets the message across. 

And maybe somebody who reads the 'zine would be inspired to read one of the books that we read as well. Any final reflections? 

I'm just really happy that we chose this topic because it's actually really, really interesting, and I'm really grateful that I read all these books. 

I got to learn a lot of things that I didn't know before about the refugee experience, not any one persons, but the general reasons of why someone might leave the place that they're in. I think that reading about this has changed my view on this topic and I think that that's really important. 

When I started to learn about refugees, I came from learning them about like a faceless and nameless person, and I didn't really connect to what they were going through. But I think that the book I read, because it was in first person and because it was in more of a dystopian near future place, it was really easy and cool to connect to it and to see that this could happen to anybody within any place.

I really want to read more of the books that we ended up looking at, because I only got to read a few and I'm more interested in the topic now. 

Yeah, I think it may have increased all of our TBR's, like Mount TBR is just looking impossible to climb at this moment. 

I would like to thank everyone for being here and sharing your perspectives and reading these books together and sharing them in your contexts. I'd like to thank Alexis Mendoza, who is our amazing sound editor for this podcast. Vianey Torres, who keeps us together administratively. Melanie Reyes, who is helping us with social media and just recorded some really good video talks about these books. 

We are recording and the Digital Innovation and Learning Lab at the University of Arizona College of Education.