Dreams and Nightmares – On a razor’s edge: Editorial Note on Refugee Literature

Dreams and nightmares take turns in every sleep cycle. They even invade the hours awake. Trudging along a razor’s edge, the refugee listens to each wave lapping against the boat, wraps her grip against fast fading memories of a room that once had her, wading thick walls of mist, the refugee journeys towards and away from an imaginary homeland. There shall no longer be a day without learning the shape of separation, without looking at broken pieces of heart, without longing for acceptance from foreign soils, skins and songs.The Antonym, sought out literary expressions—tales and artefacts built in that sleeplessness and plight.

The modern nationhood draws borders in specific ways. Religious persecution and political banishment are one of the evident causes of exile. Given the fact that home and homelessness are deeply rooted in cultural, social, technological and economic conditions of the society, for the coming eight weeks, we investigate how the communities of compelled migrants cope with the “condition of terminal loss”, negotiate their identity amidst class conflict, politics of the host country and strategies employed, if any, to achieve recognition and legitimacy. Refugee writers and artists have always been special witnesses to the shifting grounds of political, social and religious existence.

How has the accelerated movement of people, ideas, goods, and cultural practices affected literary authors of different racial, class, gender, religious, and national origins? What is the meaning of belonging, home and homeland? How do authors relate to their firsthand experiences or seen through generational loss of belonging? What happens to the physical body, affect, love and intimacy, the family, and intergenerational relations in migration? What are the narrative and lyric patterns and tropes of writing between worlds?

There are more questions than we can answer within the confines of a few issues of an online magazine. The scope of refugee literature is vast, our space and reach are limited.

Here is the line-up for July and August front and center topic Dreams and Nightmares – on a razor’s edge, our take on refugee literature of the present and from the past: