Refugee(s) Writing

– ½¾ – Displacement in Contemporary
Narratives of Forced Migration

J OPI N YMAN

I
N CONTEMPORARY REPRESENTATIONS of forced migrancy,
the case of Africa is often emphasized. Media representations turn the
refugee problem into a spectacle where migrants attempt to reach
Europe in overloaded boats, often failing in the process. While the question
of forced migration is widely debated in the fields of sociology, political
science, and social work, postcolonial literary studies have hitherto paid
scant attention to refugee writing as a genre or mode of expression. The
aim of this essay is to carve out new ways of approaching the field of
refugee writing by addressing the experience and narrative representation
of African refugees and asylum seekers in contemporary Britain through a
discussion of a variety of literary texts they have produced. In my discus-
sion of their often autobiographical stories, I will examine the various ways
in which refugees imagine themselves and their journeying to Britain.
The notion of refugee identity is addressed as a consequence of contem-
porary forced migration and defined as a category of identity in whose
formation dislocation and liminality play a major role. The materials under
study come from the three volumes of Refugees Writing in Wales edited by
Eric Ngalle Charles, Tom Cheesman, and Sylvie Hoffmann and published
by the non-profit publisher Hafan Books in Swansea between 2003 and
246 JOPI NYMAN ½¾

1
2005. The narratives, poems, and stories collected in these three volumes,
sharing the title Refugees Writing in Wales, directly address the refugee
experience in Britain. The collections offer rare glimpses into the reality of
asylum seekers in a deprived British city, where racial violence is a fact
both in the streets and at schools. The third volume, indeed, is dedicated to
the memory of Kalan Kawa Karim, “killed by a blow to the back of the
neck in a cowardly, unprovoked, racially motivated attack, in the early
hours of 6 September 2004 in the centre of Swansea.”2 The collections
include narratives by refugees – and other writers – from all over the world,
both adult and children, but in my essay the focus is on narratives written or
produced by people of African origin.3 It should be noted that not all of the
contributors are necessarily professional authors, or even writers who write
in English. Some of the narratives are tales and memoirs, others are based
on oral stories. Rather than merely aesthetic contributions, they have per-
sonal and communal functions. As Tom Cheesman points out in his preface
to the first volume,

All attest to the double value of refugee writing: to work through

personal traumas, and to communicate with the world as individuals,
instead of as the faceless, bogus bugbear of much UK media and
ignorant public opinion.4

Accordingly, I aim to show how these narratives produce refuge as a form

of liminal identity where the refugee needs to cope with the dominant cul-
ture and resist its racist gaze. In so doing, I will discuss first the image of

1
Between a Mountain and a Sea: Refugees Writing in Wales, ed. Eric Ngalle Charles,
Tom Cheesman & Sylvie Hoffmann (Swansea: Hafan, 2003); Nobody’s Perfect: Refu-
gees Writing in Wales, vol. 2, ed. Eric Ngalle Charles, Tom Cheesman & Sylvie Hoff-
mann (Swansea: Hafan, 2004); Soft Touch: Refugees Writing in Wales, vol. 3, ed. Eric
Ngalle Charles, Tom Cheesman & Sylvie Hoffmann (Swansea: Hafan, 2005). There
are, naturally, other anthologies dealing with refugee writing such as The Bend in the
Road: Refugees Writing, ed. Jennifer Langer (Nottingham: Five Leaves, 1997).
2
Anon., Dedication, in Soft Touch: Refugees Writing in Wales, vol. 3, ed. Charles,
Cheesman & Hoffmann, 1.
3
In addition to African refugees, the volumes include contributions from refugees
from such countries as Iran, Iraq, Chile, Albania and Pakistan.
4
Tom Cheesman, “Preface,” in Between a Mountain and a Sea: Refugees Writing in
Wales, ed. Charles, Cheesman & Hoffmann, 7.