Table Of ContentTHE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF
REFUGEE NARRATIVES
This Handbook presents a transnational and interdisciplinary study of refugee narratives, broadly defined.
Interrogating who can be considered a refugee and what constitutes a narrative, the thirty-eight chapters
included in this collection encompass a range of forcibly displaced subjects, a mix of geographical and
historical contexts, and a variety of storytelling modalities. Analyzing novels, poetry, memoirs, comics,
films, photography, music, social media, data, graffiti, letters, reports, eco-design, video games, arch-
ival remnants, and ethnography, the individual chapters counter dominant representations of refugees
as voiceless victims. Addressing key characteristics and thematics of refugee narratives, this Handbook
examines how refugee cultural productions are shaped by and in turn shape socio-political landscapes.
It will be of interest to researchers, teachers, students, and practitioners committed to engaging refugee
narratives in the contemporary moment.
Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi is an Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of
California, Los Angeles. Her writing has appeared in Critical Ethnic Studies, Amerasia Journal, Canadian
Review of American Studies, MELUS, American Quarterly, and LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory. Her
book, Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization across Guam and Israel-
Palestine, was published in 2022.
Vinh Nguyen is an Associate Professor of Diasporic Literature at Renison University College,
University of Waterloo. His writing can be found in Social Text, MELUS, ARIEL, Canadian Literature,
Life Writing, Migration and Society, and Canadian Review of American Studies. He is co-editor of Refugee
States: Critical Refugee Studies in Canada.
Routledge Literature Handbooks
Also available in this series:
The Routledge Handbook to the Ghost Story
Edited by Scott Brewster and Luke Thurston
The Routledge Handbook of International Beat Literature
Edited by A. Robert Lee
The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Global Appropriation
Edited by Christy Desmet, Sujata Iyengar and Miriam Jacobson
The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Animals
Edited by Karen Raber and Holly Dugan
The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translingualism
Edited by Steven G. Kellman and Natasha Lvovich
The Routledge Handbook of Star Trek
Edited by Leimar Garcia-Siino, Sabrina Mittermeier, and Stefan Rabitsch
The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Interface
Edited by Clifford Werier and Paul Budra
The Routledge Handbook of Ecofeminism and Literature
Edited by Douglas A. Vakoch
The Routledge Handbook of North American Indigenous Modernisms
Edited by Kirby Brown, Stephen Ross and Alana Sayers
The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Scandals in Literature and Culture
Edited by Brenda Ayres and Sarah E. Maier
The Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives
Edited by Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi and Vinh Nguyen
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-
Literature-Handbooks/book-series/RLHB
THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF
REFUGEE NARRATIVES
Edited by Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi and Vinh Nguyen
Designed cover image: Mohamad Hafez, Baggage #2
First published 2023
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi and
Vinh Nguyen; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi and Vinh Nguyen to be identified as the authors
of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available
under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
ISBN: 978-0-367-67476-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-67478-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-13145-8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003131458
Typeset in Bembo
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
Dedicated to the loving memory of our friend and colleague Y-Dang Troeung
refugee, survivor, storyteller
CONTENTS
List of Figures xii
List of Contributors xiii
Acknowledgments xviii
Introduction 1
Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi and Vinh Nguyen
PART I
Storytelling 13
1 Flights of Fancy: Imagination, Audacity, and Refugee Storytelling 15
Carrie Dawson
2 Theorizing Unsettlement: Refugee Narratives as Literary Ration Cards 26
B. Venkat Mani
3 Refugee Narratives and Humanitarian Form 39
Bishupal Limbu
4 Coming Undone: Displacement, Trauma, and the Crisis of (Narrative) Agency 50
Asha Varadharajan
PART II
Genres and Conventions 63
5 Refugee Noir 65
Sydney Van To
vii
Contents
6 Re-orienting the Gaze: Visualizing Refugees in Recent Film 77
Agnes Woolley
7 Song, Sound, and Refugee Affect in Life of a Flower and Song Lang 88
Lan Duong
8 Refugees to Worker-migrants: Transformations of Cross-Border
Migration in Amitav Ghosh’s Novels 100
Asis De
PART III
Visuality and Visibility 113
9 “Through the Lens of a Refugee”: Disrupting Visual
Narratives of Displacement 115
Anna Carastathis and Myrto Tsilimpounidi
10 Narrativizing Unarrival: Digital Autographics by
Asylum Seekers in the Pacific 128
M. Eliatamby-O’Brien
11 If We Do Not Write Poetry, We Will Die: Afghan Diasporic
Social Media Poetry for the Fall of Kabul 140
Zuzanna Olszewska
12 Connecting the Dots: Refugee Data Narratives 153
Roopika Risam
PART IV
Mediation and Positionality 165
13 Up Close and Personal: Mediated Testimony and Narrative
Tropes in Refugee Comics 167
Nina Mickwitz
14 “I Am Myself”: Queer Refugee Narratives 179
Elif Sar
ı
15 Applying RefugeeCrit to Recent Middle Grade/Young
Adult Children’s Literature About Refugees 191
Julia Hope
16 Refugee Narrative Pedagogy: A Cultural Refugee Studies Approach 202
Erin Goheen Glanville
viii
Contents
PART V
Border-Crossing 215
17 Border-crossing, Identity, and Voice in Central American and
U.S.-Central American Refugee Narratives 217
Regina Marie Mills
18 The Canadian Fugitive Slave Archive: Contesting the Refugee Narrative 228
Charmaine A. Nelson
19 To the Editor: Partition Refugee Relief and the Making of
the “Pakistani Muslim Citizen” in Punjab 240
Aalene Mahum Aneeq
20 Iraq and the Work of the Frame 252
Angela Naimou
PART VI
Health and (Dis)Ability 265
21 The Biopoetics of Health: Caribbean Refugee Narratives 267
April Shemak
22 Refugee Race-ability: Bodies, Lands, Worlds 278
Y-Dang Troeung
23 “Many Hands Lighten the Load”: Health Lessons from San Diego
during the Time of COVID-19 291
Christiane Assefa
PART VII
Care and Kinship 303
24 Affecting Appeals: Armenian Refugee Narratives in the Archives of
Early Humanitarian Discourse 305
Veronika Zablotsky
25 Fearless Faces: Motherhood and Gendered Mobility of North Korean
Refugees in Jero Yun’s Films 317
Eun Ah Cho
26 Queer Refugee Homemaking: Lesbian and Gay Refugees’
Oral Histories and Photovoice Narratives of Home 328
Katherine Fobear
ix
