Close your eyes.
Imagine.
What might it be like to have to flee from your home?
Leave behind your possessions.
Say goodbye to friends and family.
Leave your community and your country.
Imagine.
What might it be like to be a refugee?
These resources tell the stories of people like you or me who have had to leave behind their lives and become refugees. This may be for a combination of factors often including civil unrest, war, famine, climate change or persecution.
The circumstances in which people are forced to flee their homes may feel beyond our control, but there are small acts of kindness each and every one of us can do to make a positive difference. Understanding what you can do in your role as a health professional is important. These arts resources should help you see the world from the perspective of a refugee, it’s also helpful to take time to become aware of the needs of the people where you live and work and what resources are available to offer support.
Take a look at The Walk
At the heart of The Walk is ‘Little Amal’, a 3.5 metre-tall puppet of a young refugee girl, created by the Handspring Puppet Company. She represents all displaced children, many separated from their families. Little Amal will travel over 8,000km from the Syrian-Turkey border to the UK, embodying the urgent message “Don’t forget about us”.
Books and poetry
Go Went Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck
The plight of asylum seekers is an increasingly common literary theme in contemporary literature. I must remind myself that although many stories are fictional, they reflect the real experience of thousands of people. They are important because they keep a spotlight on the refugee crises and raise awareness about the underlying causes of mass migration. Keeping this issue alive in our hearts and minds and in the media maintains pressure on those who do have the power to make positive change.
The author grew up in a divided Berlin, she tells the story of Richard a retired academic who lives in contemporary Berlin. He lives a safe sheltered life blinkered to the experiences of refugees happening a stone’s throw from his flat. When Richard eventually sees the refugees, camped out in a local square, forbidden to work or to settle, he befriends them and starts to explore who each of them is, seeing them as individuals with families, fears, hopes and dreams. This book is about the human issues of migration.
American Dirt review coming…
The Bee Keeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri
Nuri is a beekeeper; his wife, Afra, is an artist. They live happily in the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo – until the unthinkable happens and they are forced to flee. But what Afra has seen is so terrible she has gone blind which makes their perilous journey through Turkey and Greece towards an uncertain future in Britain even more challenging. As Nuri and Afra travel through a broken world, they must confront not only the pain of their own unspeakable loss but dangers that would overwhelm the bravest of souls. Review thanks to Daunt Books
The Optician of Lampedusa by Emma Jane Kirby
In this book, Emma Jane Kirby a reporter for the BBC tells the story of the refugee crises through the eyes of a tourist who becomes caught up in the migration of people across the Mediterranean.
A trompe l’oeil created in Paris by artist Delavie to highlight the plight of refugees.
The Sleeping Beauties by Suzanne O’Sullivan
The ‘The Sleeping Beauties’ are a group of refugee children who on arrival in Sweden, a place of safety, fall asleep, unable to be woken, perhaps protected from the reality of the events that led them to become refugees. Their plight continues, untreated and unresolved, cared for by family and local the local community, recovery only occurring when the children receive settled status.
The book is a collection of international stories, collated and expertly narrated by Susanne O’Sullivan a consultant neurologist with specific expertise in functional illness. In a world where what we see down a microscope or read reported in terms of mmol/l shapes our understanding of illness, O’Sullivan reminds us that external events in our communities and culture also have the potential to shape our experience of illness. The book is an interesting read for non-medics as it explores many topical health stories, such as the Havannah Syndrome in Cuba. It’s an essential read for any clinician or medical student as the concept of functional illness does not fit neatly with the dogma of western medicine, is often excluded by clinicians from the differential diagnosis and is rarely accepted by patients. It is an easy read and a great resource for a tutorial or teaching session.
The stories and O’Sullivans analysis helped me to think more clearly about functional illness and provided another piece of evidence to support the importance of living in a caring and compassionate community.
Two short excerpts from one of the poems.
‘No one puts their children in a boat, unless the water is safer than the land. No one would choose days and nights in the stomach of a truck unless the miles of travel meant something more than journey.’
‘I want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark. Home is the barrel of a gun. No one would leave home unless home chased you to the shore. No one would leave home until home is a voice in your ear saying – leave, run, now. I don’t know what I’ve become.’
This is British Somali writer and poet, Warsan Shire’s first book of poems, they continue her exploration of the plight of women who are forced to flee their homes to find safety.
Art
Artist Ai Weiwei collected over 14 000 lifejackets abandoned on the shores of Lesbos a Greece Island in the middle of the path refugees take to flee Syria for Europe. he displayed the jackets on the columns of the Konzerhaus in Berlin to highlight the plight of people seeking refuge in Europe.
Take a look at the Nakba project- Return of the Soul
You can watch a short YouTube film about this project.
More resources to come
Page created May 2021
Books and poetry
Go Went Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck
The plight of asylum seekers is an increasingly common literary theme in contemporary literature. I must remind myself that although many stories are fictional, they reflect the real experience of thousands of people. They are important because they keep a spotlight on the refugee crises and raise awareness about the underlying causes of mass migration. Keeping this issue alive in our hearts and minds and in the media maintains pressure on those who do have the power to make positive change.
The author grew up in a divided Berlin, she tells the story of Richard a retired academic who lives in contemporary Berlin. He lives a safe sheltered life blinkered to the experiences of refugees happening a stone’s throw from his flat. When Richard eventually sees the refugees, camped out in a local square, forbidden to work or to settle, he befriends them and starts to explore who each of them is, seeing them as individuals with families, fears, hopes and dreams. This book is about the human issues of migration.
American Dirt review coming…
The Bee Keeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri
Nuri is a beekeeper; his wife, Afra, is an artist. They live happily in the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo – until the unthinkable happens and they are forced to flee. But what Afra has seen is so terrible she has gone blind which makes their perilous journey through Turkey and Greece towards an uncertain future in Britain even more challenging. As Nuri and Afra travel through a broken world, they must confront not only the pain of their own unspeakable loss but dangers that would overwhelm the bravest of souls. Review thanks to Daunt Books
The Optician of Lampedusa by Emma Jane Kirby
In this book, Emma Jane Kirby a reporter for the BBC tells the story of the refugee crises through the eyes of a tourist who becomes caught up in the migration of people across the Mediterranean.
A trompe l’oeil created in Paris by artist Delavie to highlight the plight of refugees.
The Sleeping Beauties by Suzanne O’Sullivan
The ‘The Sleeping Beauties’ are a group of refugee children who on arrival in Sweden, a place of safety, fall asleep, unable to be woken, perhaps protected from the reality of the events that led them to become refugees. Their plight continues, untreated and unresolved, cared for by family and local the local community, recovery only occurring when the children receive settled status.
The book is a collection of international stories, collated and expertly narrated by Susanne O’Sullivan a consultant neurologist with specific expertise in functional illness. In a world where what we see down a microscope or read reported in terms of mmol/l shapes our understanding of illness, O’Sullivan reminds us that external events in our communities and culture also have the potential to shape our experience of illness. The book is an interesting read for non-medics as it explores many topical health stories, such as the Havannah Syndrome in Cuba. It’s an essential read for any clinician or medical student as the concept of functional illness does not fit neatly with the dogma of western medicine, is often excluded by clinicians from the differential diagnosis and is rarely accepted by patients. It is an easy read and a great resource for a tutorial or teaching session.
The stories and O’Sullivans analysis helped me to think more clearly about functional illness and provided another piece of evidence to support the importance of living in a caring and compassionate community.
Two short excerpts from one of the poems.
‘No one puts their children in a boat, unless the water is safer than the land. No one would choose days and nights in the stomach of a truck unless the miles of travel meant something more than journey.’
‘I want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark. Home is the barrel of a gun. No one would leave home unless home chased you to the shore. No one would leave home until home is a voice in your ear saying – leave, run, now. I don’t know what I’ve become.’
This is British Somali writer and poet, Warsan Shire’s first book of poems, they continue her exploration of the plight of women who are forced to flee their homes to find safety.