Refugee Tales

by David Herd (Editor), Ali Smith, Marina Lewycka

Two unaccompanied children travel across the Mediterranean in an overcrowded boat that has been designed to only make it halfway across…

A 63-year-old man is woken one morning by border officers ‘acting on a tip-off’ and, despite having paid taxes for 28 years, is suddenly cast into the detention system with no obvious means of escape…

An orphan whose entire life has been spent in slavery – first on a Ghanaian farm, then as a victim of trafficking – writes to the Home Office for help, only to be rewarded with a jail sentence and indefinite detention…

These are not fictions. Nor are they testimonies from some distant, brutal past, but the frighteningly common experiences of Europe’s new underclass – its refugees. While those with ‘citizenship’ enjoy basic human rights (like the right not to be detained without charge for more than 14 days), people seeking asylum can be suspended for years in Kafka-esque uncertainty. Here, poets and novelists retell the stories of individuals who have direct experience of Britain’s policy of indefinite immigration detention. Presenting their accounts anonymously, as modern day counterparts to the pilgrims’ stories in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, this book offers rare, intimate glimpses into otherwise untold suffering.

Genres: Nonfiction, Short Stories, Politics, Anthologies, Race, School, Poetry

163 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 30, 2016

About the author

David Herd is a poet, critic, and teacher. His collections of poetry include All Just (Carcanet 2012), Outwith (Bookthug 2012), and Through (Carcanet 2016), and his recent writings on the politics of human movement have appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, Parallax and Almost Island. He is Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Kent, has worked with Kent Refugee Help since 2009, and is a coordinator of Refugee Tales.

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect stories by prominent writers on the reality of being a refugee - the private is political, whether we like it or not. And to all of you out there, making political statements about immigration, remember that policy affects humanity, always!

Staple collection that should be part of each school library!

[Val · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 2015 a large group of former detainees, refugees and asylum seekers, plus people who worked with and to support them, together with writers and other artists, walked along the Pilgim's Way and told stories each evening in public buildings. The project was inspired by Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales", which brought an almost invisible people and language to the fore for the first time, and it was intended to raise the visibility and profile of a group of people often either ignored or demonised by society at large. This book collects some of the stories, true ones, but told through the medium of literature by established authors.
It hasn't stopped the xenophobia or demonisation, or led to improvements in the detention system, but few people now simply ignore the problem, although it is difficult to credit this to the project alone.

[Lilli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely phenomenal! Only took me so long Bec ive been super busy and this is quite heavy subject matter! But pls everyone read this! Especially from the U.K. but also just Europe more generally. Xenophobia is such a HUGE problem and British as well as European institutions are perpetuating it massively. I honestly was not aware how ducked the migration and asylum system is in the U.K. so pls educate yourselves

[Dominga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone should read these sadly true tales. And after 7 years, things are getting worse and worse. Every time I get to read books or articles about what's happening to innocent refugees or immigrants, I feel deeply ashamed and somehow guilty as I am part of the "welcoming" countries. My family were immigrants to America and know what it means not to be welcomed and undertake difficulties and not being accepted. I really can't understand how we've reached this point.

[Basia · Rating 5 out of 5]

mandatory reading for every EU citizen!!

[m d · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Do you know what limbo means? It means the edge of hell."

In my current job I can see what past trauma and ongoing uncertainty which comes with pending asylum claims can do to someone's mental health, despite their own strength, bravery, resilience... I also know that, as a country, we could handle this soooooooo much better, with humanity, empathy, compassion, respect. Because, as it is now, we are failing people.

[Pavel Nedelcu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes, it happens! It happens nowadays, in UK and who knows where else? The refugees and the asylum seekers are detained for years without having committed any crime. They are given an ”azure card” which they can use only to buy food in certain supermarkets! Processed whithout being present, they are held away from language and not believed when they painfully describe their traumas. They are beaten without any reason, arrested in the middle of the night, deported by force, not allowed to work. There are institutions in UK whose fundamental purpose is that of reducing immigration - but under the guise of good Samaritans. This is what we, humans, can do to other humans like us just because it is too difficult to think at effective solutions and because if something catches us unprepared, the best solution is to return at our monkey state and behave like owners of... what? A territory? All the outsiders would have to either wait (4 to 9 years in a detention center - worse than a prison, they relate) or go back where they came from. It happens today in the UK, and the book is made for those who still don't know it.

[sauvageloup]

I don't think its entirely appropriate to do a star rating for this one so I haven't. It tells some powerful tales and I felt myself moved and also profoundly disappointed in my country. I knew we could do more, but I didn't realise how badly we're currently doing in relation to the protection of already vulnerable people coming to us for help. I didn't like some of the styles - I felt the emotional impact of some tales was lost because the telling was too confusing: I struggled to care deeply when I couldn't follow what was happening. I did enjoy the variety and the writing was overall very good. This isn't a book I would have read had it not been a uni book and I struggled to find the motivation to read it because of its extremely unhappy subject matter, but it contains important stories and i'm glad I did read it, as I feel much more aware of what refugees have to go through in the UK system.

[Alena · Rating 3 out of 5]

The style fluctuates from chapter to chapter depending on the storyteller and the person it is being told to. Therefore the structure is radically different. However this is not a book about structure. Each story is important, relevant and manages to give a new perspective on the situations. The chapters I personally found most engaging were The Lorry Drivers Tale and The Unaccompanied Minors Tale.

[Cathrine · Rating 4 out of 5]

«I thought you would help me.»

- Ali Smith

[Jacky Chan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I no longer believe that literary and artistic endeavours will change the world, but oh how tempting this volume makes such belief. The Refugee Tales takes Chaucer's Canterbury Tales broadly as a frame and interrogates the intertwined issues of nations and nationhood, borders, land, movement, language, identity, and most important of all, the power and value of telling a story. In doing so Chaucer himself takes on new significances (I particularly love the new shades to 'The Man of Law's Tale' that are being highlighted), affirming what we have known all along: that the refugee community has so much to offer to the UK and whereever else they go. So the thematic density and intricacy of the endeavour is simply astounding, which I hopefully will be exploring in a blog post soon. Admittedly I was a bit put off by how the stories seem to be endlessly generating at some point during reading, but that of course points simply to how critical the refugee crisis has become, as well as to how there are people who continue to believe that telling their story will make a difference. Who am I not to lend a hearing ear and reading eye, then?

But when I came to this place, when I came to your country, you say.
I sit forward. I'm listening.
You shake your head.
I thought you would help me, you say.

[Fx Smeets · Rating 5 out of 5]

Writing a review of Refugee Tales is a bit awkward: if not the best, this is definitely the most important book I have read this year. I will object to some of the texts, as the form selected by some of the authors comes in the way of the story they want to relay. But this cannot be held against the book, which is more a project than a book, as laid out by the excellent Afterwords.

Actually, like it or not, there is something to be said regarding the selected forms. That so many authors resorted to poetry or poetic prose is, of course, down to the number of poets among them. But it is also an attempt at finding a language which can translate the horrific stories of the witnesses into a tale for the middle-class reader - a language that cuts through the isolating layer of our comfort and reaches to our emotions. Poetry is not always successful. When it is though, it forces our attention. The words stick.

"Why should I be treated as stranger, as refugee
in the country I was born, barricaded in
my bank, while demonstrators outside shout blasphemy,
hundreds, thousands fed with propaganda poison."

Though many, many tales compose the incomplete kaleidoscope of the refugee situation in the UK (the 14-year-old boy floating to his death in the Mediterranean, the Calais-to-Dover lorry driver, the 14-year-old boy living in European airport detention centers, the powerless friends, the 63-year-old BBC journalist sent to jail after 28 years living in Croydon, the interpreter, the 8 and 7-year-old taken away from their house in Bradford in the middle of the night by the police, the powerless lawyer, ...) the last text, from which the above lines are extracted, has a special resonance. It talks about a country, Sudan, where Copts and Muslims used to live in harmony until a new government ripped the society apart

"Like the two faiths that can't

be divided by politicians completely corrupted,
splitting the country like an open wound: they insert
a lie and there's Christians abducted."

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please, Please, Please. For anybody remotely interested in current affairs or the potential future this text has to be a must. The concept, quality of writing and execution is absolutely fabulous. Give it a chance and you wont be disappointed.

[Stephanie Cullen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Should be required reading for any anti-immigrant pro-Brexiteer.

[Sofie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stories that must be told and re-told.

[Anya Quinn 🐞📖 · Rating 4 out of 5]

“what kind of life are we living on this earth when a photocopied piece of paper can mean and say more about your life than your life does?” p.61

This was an assigned text for my english module on Chaucer and I didn’t know what to expect. We just finished Patience Agbabi’s ‘Telling Tales’ which was amazing, but followed closely to the plots of The Canterbury Tales through the perspective of different cultures. This collection transforms the skill of adaptation, the importance of geographies and how the act of a pilgrimage unites people. How telling stories can bring truths to light despite the pain they bring to the surface. The afterword phrases it beautifully, “a culturally charged sense of space, the visible fact of human movement, and an exchange of information through the act of telling stories.” These tales “[assert] their places in the landscape” when refugees have been forced for hide away from their honest sense of self.

It was an upsetting read but very important. I did feel disappointed over my own awareness of detention and the unknown waiting period. But i am grateful that this collection brought the realities to my attention, as Herd signifies the need “for a life not to be held brutally in suspense” with no warning when their livelihood will be taken away without cause or fairness. The stories in this novel are so brutal and frustrating, knowing as a reader you can only try to listen to their pain, just as the interviewers had to. And am grateful that these authors and poets visited the detention centres to gather the truth and approached this project with great understanding and respect. I know our class discussion about this work will be an intense one, but I am also looking forward to mentions of Chaucer within the text and why the writers decided to follow a medieval poets pilgrimage that viewed movement as pleasurable, when a refugees journey is to venture into the unknown, hoping to eventually be welcomed. I really enjoyed this.

[Ellie T · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked up this slim volume from our local library and have just ordered volume 2 from them. What became clear to me is that so many people arriving in this country, legally or illegally, and seeking asylum have equally horrible stories to tell. The fact that some of the horrors they experience are after they arrive in this country is shameful.

Refugee Tales was born from a project walking the South Downs Way in 2015. The group of walkers was formed of authors and poets, refugees and asylum seekers and a variety of people who worked to support those going through the horrific process of seeking asylum. Each day the group paused and told tales, true tales, of things that seem unimaginable.

I found some of the writing a little challenging in style, especially given my loathing of Chaucer due to months spent translating the Wife of Bath's Tale at school when I was 14. Despite the challenges though, the authors got across the stories they were telling very powerfully and it's left me with a renewed sense of frustration and rage. Things are no better now, 10 years on. In fact they're much, much worse I think.

[Johan D'Haenen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Er is een onderscheid tussen migranten en vluchtelingen.
Migranten zijn mensen die uit vrije wil en om persoonlijke redenen emigreren naar een ander land.
Vluchtelingen zijn mensen die niet uit vrije wil, maar uit noodzaak - klimaatverandering, oorlog, sociaal-economische toestanden, natuurrampen, religieuze of politieke vervolging ... - gedwongen worden op de vlucht te slaan en hun heil en dat van hun familie elders te gaan zoeken.
Spreek dan ook niet van een migrantenproblematiek, want die kan of mag er niet zijn. Daar tegenover staat dan de realiteit van de vluchtelingenproblematiek, en de kern van die problematiek is niet de vluchtelingen zelf, maar wel de oorzaak van hun op de vlucht slaan... gecombineerd met de reactie van de bevolking en de regeringen van de landen waar die vluchtelingen terecht komen op zoek naar bescherming.
De reeks "Refugee Tales" is verbonden met een sinds 2015 jaarlijks terugkerend evenement in het VK waarbij de vluchtelingen een stem gegeven wordt. Lees de verhalen... erg opwekkend zijn ze niet, maar ze stemmen zeker tot nadenken.

[Ishmael Soledad · Rating 2 out of 5]

An also-ran in the refugee biography stakes, this is an (at times) difficult read, not because of the subject matter but rather by the way it is delivered. Disjointed, badly written (even accounting for the fact that the refugees contributing to the volume may not speak English as their first language and have needed assistance translating), it purports to be totally non-fiction while at the same time containing riders that the characters and people are works of fiction (see footnote p. 24).

Although carrying the title "Refugee Tales" it is somewhat disingenuous; perhaps if the title were "Refugee Experiences of UK Intransigence" it would be more honest.

Misses the mark it sets by a wide margin, and there are other books out there which do a better, and more direct, job.

[Sally · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was such a surprise to me! I bought it to support the organizations to which the proceeds go, and expected to read harrowing tales of migration of the type I have read in Thoughtful journalism. But this is a work of deeply moving literature. The tales are indeed harrowing, as they should be, but they are structured into a modern day Canterbury Tales of poetry and prose which bring another dimension of emotional, contextual, linguistic and historical impact. We also see the UK asylum system illuminated from so many points of view (that of lawyers, volunteer visitors, unaccompanied minors, families and many more). I was riveted from start to finish.

[Highlyeccentric · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this. As an interactive project, especially in its first iteration, where a group of ex-detainees and allies did a solidarity march to Canterbury, stopping to read out anonymised stories... it sounds like it was very powerful. It's still going on annually now, I believe.

What strikes me is that... storytelling only goes so far. I remember a student in Geneva waxing fervent about how if we only knew the STORIES of the Mediterranean migrants people would view them differently. This was not long after Behrouz Bouchani had published 'No Friend But The Mountains', and I, a jaded white Australian, probably was too harsh on this kid, because... the appetite for Stories Of Suffering is so much greater than any change that could be attributed to it.

[Jane Wilson-Howarth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an important book. It feels like it covers the full range of refugee experience, from the perils of sea-crossings to re-deportation via a truck-drivers view. It is all powerful stuff which doesn't make me feel at all proud to be British. This a book to be widely shared within the UK, then perhaps we'll learn a little compassion.

[Felicity · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the variety of styles presented in the collection and must read more from some of the poets and authors, the text made me angry and emotional. I am fortunate to read this collection not not have to endure the painful treatment of those who are refugees, wherever they may be. I am currently researching ways in which I can help this crisis and help be a better ally to those in need.

[Violet-May Davey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I particularly loved the short story titled 'The Unaccompanied Minor's Tale' as told to Inua Ellams as it tells the story of friendship, sacrifice, grief, and quick deaths between 3 children (referred to as the three musketeers). Rather than tell a factual report, we have a focus towards life experiences instead. It's chaotic as well as showing the truth over fact.

[chloe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay I have a rule not to review books that I read for ~academic~ purposes (aka I’m writing an essay on this book right now) BUT I genuinely found this book so interesting and insightful! There are so many important stories in here.

[Wenke · Rating 4 out of 5]

All of these volumes are such an important collection. Migrants and refugees told writers their stories and those then wrote them down which made for many different tales and ways of writing them. Truly heartbreaking at times but definitely worth to read.

[Rahiya · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this book does a great job of challenging what narratives are told and the slippages and cracks of representations within these ‘othered’ narratives. A creatively inspiring project - I feel like Chaucer would’ve been jealous xoxo

[Marie-Louise Olsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only read some of the chapters for school, but it still counts. 3.5/5

[Wombo Combo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of these stories were really heartbreaking and effective, but others didn't generate much of a reaction from me

[Stine Pernille · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it!