Stories are a way of making sense of the world and our place in it. They help us connect with other people and ourselves.
By reading and listening to stories about refugee experiences, we can deepen our understanding of the impact of forced migration and displacement.
This Refugee Week, we encourage you to pick a book or listen to a podcast that platforms the stories and perspectives of refugees and asylum seekers.
Here are some ideas to take part:
Books:
- Read a book
- Theme your next book club read and/ or organise a book exchange
- Work at a bookshop or a library? Curate a book display!
Podcasts & Audio
- Listen to a podcast episode or audiobook
- Host a listening party
- Do you host a podcast? Produce a Refugee Week special podcast!
Some recommendations:
Fiction:
- Assembly by Natasha Brown
- Asylum Road by Olivia Sudjic
- A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum
- Babel by R.F. Kuang
- By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
- From Another World by Evelina Santangelo
- Iraq+100, edited by Hassan Blasim
- The Beekeeper of Aleppo Christy Lefteri
- The World and All That it Holds by Aleksandar Hemon
For Children:
Podcasts:
- Asylum Speakers with Jazz O’Hara
- Blended – Waad Al-Kateab
- Experts by Experience- Refugee Action Podcast
- Five Myths About the Refugee Crisis
- Have You Met
- How to Fail – Episode: Yusra Mardini
- How to Fail – Episode: Warsan Shire
- In My Country
- Nadir Nahdi – Sara Mardini
- The Long Time Academy podcast by Ella Saltmarsh – Loving Kindness For Future Generations
- Un/Documented
- We are VOICES
Non Fiction:
- A Human Being Died That Night by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela
- All Else Failed by Dana Sachs
- Asylum Speakers by WorldWideTribe
- Child Migrants by Eithne Nightingale
- Conversations from Calais edited by Mathilda Della Torres
- Dispatches from the Diaspora by Gary Younge
- Hope Not Fear by Hassan Akkad
- Map of Hope and Sorrow by Eyad Awwadawnan, Helen Benedict
- Refugee Heritage by Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti
- This Hostel Life by Melatu Uche Okorie
- The Lightless Sky by Gulwali Passarlay
- The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater
- The Ungrateful Refugee by Dina Nayeri
- Voices from the Jungle by Calais Writers
- Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang
- Who Gets Believed? By Dina Nayeri