Issue Details: First known date: 2023... 2023 Behrouz Boochani on Manus Island : Contesting Refugee Experience in the Global South
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This article makes a case for reframing refugee literature through reading Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains, translated from Farsi by Omid Tofighian. Written in detention on Manus Island via text messages on WhatsApp, Boochani’s book has won wide acclaim in Australia and internationally, not only among literary critics, but as a work of popular appeal in writers’ festivals and cultural prizes. The popular narrative around No Friend but the Mountains has introduced it, on the one hand, as a representative specimen of refugee literature, and more specifically as an example of life writing of a stateless Kurd. We argue that Boochani’s work resists reductive characterisations of refugee literature both through its literary investments and its multiple affiliations with political and discursive interests. By attending closely to stylistic properties and its discursive contexts, we emphasise that No Friend but the Mountains is not just a protest against Boochani’s own treatment by the Australian government but a tracing of how the lived experience and literary subjectivity of refugees in the Global South contests facile categorisation and unitary nationalism.'(Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Journal of Australian Studies vol. 47 no. 3 2023 26981613 2023 periodical issue

    'This issue of the Journal of Australian Studies takes us across times, places, knowledges and identities, from Australia’s atomic history to the carceral world of Manus Island, to the profound relationality within Indigenous epistemology, and diverse experiences of cultural marginality and remaking in Australia.' (Editorial introduction)

    2023
    pg. 531-546
Last amended 10 Oct 2023 11:27:24
531-546 Behrouz Boochani on Manus Island : Contesting Refugee Experience in the Global Southsmall AustLit logo Journal of Australian Studies
Subjects:
  • Manus Island,
    c
    Papua New Guinea,
    c
    Pacific Region,
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X