Refugee literature sheds light on personal resilience and histories, offering perspectives that challenge and deepen our understanding of the struggles and effects of being a refugee. On Nov. 7, in a thought-provoking webinar titled “From Salvage to Survivance: Vibrations of Memory in Refugee Literature,” honors students gathered with Qazi Arka Rahman, an assistant professor the University of Connecticut, to listen to Gabriella Pishotti’s presentation on refugee literature.
Rahman started the webinar by introducing it as the first of the three-part “Teas Speaker Series,” where the common theme is re-imagining refugees. The second webinar will be virtual and on the UConn Hartford campus on Nov. 12, while the final one will be virtual on Dec. 3. Each webinar will have a different presenter.
Students were then introduced to the presenter of the first part of the series, Pishotti, who specialized in immigration and refugee studies during her doctorate studies and emphasized her excitement about being a part of the conversation and series.
The event required students to delve into selected readings beforehand, preparing them for an in-depth conversation. Pishotti provided an outline for her presentation, which includes why literature is vital to critical refugee studies, how literature fosters relationality, an analysis of creative examples and a discussion on survivance.
Before officially starting her presentation, Pishotti provided a land acknowledgment.
“A land acknowledgment helps to remind us of the people who have been harmed and oppressed in the past and of the harms that continue today,” said Pishotti. “I wanted to recognize Pittsburgh, which is the city I’m presenting from; it occupies the ancestral lands of the Seneca, the Adena, the Hopewell and the Monongahela peoples who were later joined by other refugees from other tribes who were all forced off their original land and displaced by European colonists.”
Pishotti then dove into why refugee literature is important, focusing on the negative public attitudes to refugees by “erasing their own individual hardships and conflicts.” Meaning that every refugee experience is different, however, the media has given a common portrayal without individual stories. There has also been a continuous rise in the death toll of refugees.
Refugee literature often focuses on the individual stories that are needed to understand the refugee crisis, otherwise without them we don’t really comprehend the extent of the everlasting struggle. To further show this, Pishotti focused on the book “Dictee” by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, an autobiography about the stories of various women.
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Pishotti provided a video titled “Palimpsest for Generation 1.5” later in the presentation. Words and phrases such as “no choice but to leave” are painted on Anida Yoeu Ali’s back and then washed away. However, this is repeated many times. The performance shows the struggle to put this violence into words. “The work examines the cultural and emotional residence placed in memory and [its] relationship to personal histories of violence,” Pishotti quoted from Ali.
Pishotti then moved to an example of the celebration of refugee identity. “Illuminated Recipes: Cravings, Customs, and Comforts” by Christine Yen Tran-Phan is a collection of Vietnamese recipes, and the fact that it is a recipe book is important as food has a lot to do with personal history and traditions. “Food tells stories and has a who, where and why? And for refugees, it can be a source of survival necessity,” said Tran-Phan in her introduction.
To close the presentation, Pishotti provided disheartening statistics regarding the refugee crisis. In the data she displays, back in 2019, there were 25.9 million refugees, while now, in 2024, there are 37.9 million refugees. Even more shocking is that there were 70.8 million displaced people in 2019 and 122.6 million displaced people currently, which is close to double the number.
Pishotti used these works “as a sampling of refugee literary creative works to demonstrate a range of possibilities for how this field is operating in terms of literary work, political critique and resistance. Literature can offer alternative representations of refugee realities.”
Concluding the presentation, Pishotti handed the webinar back to Rahman before answering any questions the students had. She left students with the following question: “How can we continue making conscious space for refugee presence and voice?”