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Welcome

I started this blog in 2013 to share my reflections on reading, writing and psychology, along with my journey to become a published novelist.​  I soon graduated to about twenty book reviews a month and a weekly 99-word story. Ten years later, I've transferred my writing / publication updates to my new website but will continue here with occasional reviews and flash fiction pieces, and maybe the odd personal post.

ANNE GOODWIN'S WRITING NEWS

12 recommended reads for World Refugee Day

20/6/2020

8 Comments

 
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Twenty people a minute abandon their homes to escape war, persecution or terror. The United Nations has designated June 20 as World Refugee Day in solidarity with refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, stateless persons and returnees. The global pandemic means they need our support more than ever; having made my donation, I’m ready to share some fiction books you might like to read. All were published within the last ten years and are loosely arranged in historical order of the story setting, beginning with two set in the Second World War and ending with two which are timeless. I’ve limited myself to twelve, but could have chosen more. I hope you find something here to tempt you.
Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina is a survival story about a young mother from a Tatar village who finds a certain kind of freedom when she’s transported to the Soviet Gulag.
 
In The Photographer by Meike Ziervogel, a young family builds a new life in a refugee camp near Hamburg at the end of the Second World War.
 
Being an unloved child is not unlike being an outsider in someone else's land. The unnamed narrator of You Would Have Missed Me by Birgit Vanderbeke, is both, in a pitch-perfect account of a five-year-old migrating with her family from east to west Germany, with no-one to help her translate her experience into words.
 
Miki, the teenage protagonist of Alen Mešković’s poignant yet optimistic coming-of-age story, is also adrift. Set against the backdrop of hatred and violence that erupted within a part of Europe where different cultures had lived in harmony under Tito since the end of the Second World War, Ukelele Jam rose from the author’s own experience of being a Bosnian refugee.
 
The Spice Box Letters by Eve Makis: an elderly Armenian living in Nicosia is exiled a second time with the partitioning of Cyprus into Greek and Turkish sectors.
 
In The Weight of a Piano by Chris Cander, mother’s reluctant relocation to California from the Soviet Union is part of a beautiful story about obsession, fear of intimacy and the distorting pain of childhood loss.
 
Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen: an Israeli doctor has an uncomfortable encounter with a migrant from Eritrea in a novel about the lengths to which we go to evade our responsibilities towards our fellow human beings.
 
breach by Olumide Popoola and Annie Holmes is a collection of short stories set in the now dismantled Calais refugee camp known as The Jungle.
 
Shatila Stories is a multi-authored novella resulting from an innovative collaboration between current residents of the Palestinian camp in Shatila and London-based publisher, Peirene Press.
 
Travellers by Helon Habila is a hybrid between a novel and a short story collection illustrating how the experience of migration to Europe from Africa is as variable as the individuals who make that journey, and the welcome or otherwise they receive along the way.
 
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid brings a touch of magic realism to a gritty tale of burgeoning love within an atmosphere of murder and mayhem.
 
These Are The Names by Tommy Wieringa: fifteen desperate people hand over their documentation to the traffickers, assured they have a better chance of being granted asylum if they arrive with no names.
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I’ve explored a little of the migrant identity in my short story collection, Becoming Someone. In one story, those with the luxury of being born in the West don’t realise their well-liked work colleague is at risk of deportation. In another, refugee parents are shocked by their British-born teenage daughter’s disconnection from the persecution that brought them to seek asylum.

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In the field of mental health, the term asylum has been stripped of its original meaning and come to signify the worst of inpatient psychiatric ‘care’. That’s certainly the sense in which it’s used in my forthcoming novel, Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home, about a brother and sister separated for fifty years, is primarily set in a longstay psychiatric hospital. You’ve missed your chance to choose a name for the hospital, but if you register for my email newsletter, you might be lucky and win a copy.

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Let’s migrate to Michigan, from where Charli has put out a call for your 99-word stories about good vibes. I’m still feeling hopeful about the groundswell that is the re-emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, so that’s where I’ve taken my story about fictional migrants … with a humorous twist!

Migrants Welcome

Turn around! Turn around! There are people on the beach.
White people.
Waving.
Weapons?
Books!
Mein Kampf? Atlas Shrugged?
Who knows?
I’m weary, let’s chance it!
I’m hungry.
I’m so thirsty I could drink seawater.
Turn around! I won’t birth my baby in a detention centre.
They’re waving placards!
To beat us?
To warn us?
To greet us!
Don’t rock the boat, I’ll vomit!
Can’t you feel the good vibrations? Row nearer so we can read the words.
Wow: MIGRANTS’ LIVES MATTER!
What makes you think we can trust them?
Isn’t it obvious? The apostrophe’s in the right place.
Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
8 Comments
Norah Colvin
21/6/2020 12:05:55 pm

Gotta love those apostrophes. Great flash, Anne. And a great reminder for World Refugee Day. While not one that you've included here, I downloaded a refugee story to listen to today - The Beekeeper of Aleppo. I know I had other stories on my list to read but it popped up just as I finished my previous book and I decided to listen. I hadn't thought of the refugee connection at the time but it will make it all the more meaningful.

Reply
Anne
24/6/2020 05:34:39 pm

Indeed, and I nearly missed them out! I've heard of The Beekeeper but haven't read it. Hope you enjoy it.

Reply
Norah Colvin
28/6/2020 12:12:39 pm

I'm finding it interesting, and horrific, Anne. The situation in your flash has some similarities.

Anne
29/6/2020 03:54:28 pm

Oh no! Make sure you can switch off with something more cheery.

Marsha Ingrao link
24/6/2020 04:39:54 am

Very poignant story. Imagine being pregnant on a boat fleeing to another country and worrying about birthing your baby in a detention camp.

Reply
Anne
24/6/2020 05:36:14 pm

Thanks, Marsha, horrific indeed. Hope all is well with you.

Reply
Charli Mills
25/6/2020 05:18:11 am

Anne, that last sentence caught me off guard! Let proper use of a possessive apostrophe be a good sign. You opening post sentence is sobering --every twenty minutes. Displacement with total uncertainty, dangers, and an inability to communicate are massive human burdens. We need to offer a hand up along with a proper placard, welcoming.

Reply
Anne
25/6/2020 11:05:37 am

Thanks, Charli, I think it needed that little kick of surprise, although most of my fictional migrants couldn't speak, never mind to read, English, but I had to cut that part. I'm sure there is no correlation between grammar accuracy and kindness to migrants, but reading fiction is meant to promote empathy, so perhaps not too crazy idea!

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