Representing trauma and the refugee experience : applying RefugeeCrit to recent Canadian picture books about refugees
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: Information, School of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Luo, Yi
issued: 2024-03-07T19:14:04Z
issued: 2024
related degree: Master of Arts - MA
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: Along with unceasing refugee crises, the last few decades have seen a rapid growth of refugee experience depiction in children’s literature. Refugee stories for children, as “an emergent genre” (Hope, “One Day We Had to Run” 296), have attained increasing scholarly attention. Given the inclination to focus the portrayal of refugee experience mainly on “refugee flight” in many children’s picture books (Strekalova-Hughes 24), scholars have underscored the importance of more diverse and nuanced representations of the lives of refugee children that transcend the mere refugee flight to reflect their cultures, histories, agency and tenacity, as well as explain the reasons causing the flight (Tomsic and Deery; Strekalova-Hughes; Darragh and Kelley; Hope). This thesis examines the representations of refugee experiences depicted in three recently published Canadian picture books: The Doll (Tran-Davies and Puth), Salma the Syrian Chef (Ramadan and Bron) and The Paper Boat (Lam). Drawing on the RefugeeCrit framework (Strekalova-Hughes), I perform a close reading of the selected picture books, taking into consideration words and images, to examine the refugee experience representations, while situating it within the larger body of “children’s literature of atrocity” (Baer 382; Kidd, “‘A’ is for Auschwitz” 120). The goal of this study is to add to the relatively limited scholarship drawing on the RefugeeCrit framework in analyzing children’s picture books about refugees, especially in the context of Canadian children’s literature.
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/87543
note: REPRESENTING TRAUMA AND THE REFUGEE EXPERIENCE: APPLYING REFUGEECRIT TO RECENT CANADIAN PICTURE BOOKS ABOUT REFUGEES by Yi Luo B.A., Renmin University of China, 2020 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Children’s Literature) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) March 2024 © Yi Luo, 2024 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the thesis entitled: Representing Trauma and the Refugee Experience: Applying RefugeeCrit to Recent Canadian Picture Books about Refugees submitted by Yi Luo in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Children’s Literature Examining Committee: Dr. Theresa Rogers, Language, Department of Language & Literacy Education, UBC Supervisor Dr. Elizabeth Marshall, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Tess Prendergast, School of Information, UBC Supervisory Committee Member iii Abstract Along with unceasing refugee crises, the last few decades have seen a rapid growth of refugee experience depiction in children’s literature. Refugee stories for children, as “an emergent genre” (Hope, “One Day We Had to Run” 296), have attained increasing scholarly attention. Given the inclination to focus the portrayal of refugee experience mainly on “refugee flight” in many children’s picture books (Strekalova-Hughes 24), scholars have underscored the importance of more diverse and nuanced representations of the lives of refugee children that transcend the mere refugee flight to reflect their cultures, histories, agency and tenacity, as well as explain the reasons causing the flight (Tomsic and Deery; Strekalova-Hughes; Darragh and Kelley; Hope). This thesis examines the representations of refugee experiences depicted in three recently published Canadian picture books: The Dol…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2024-05
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0440646
language: eng
degree discipline: Children's Literature
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
contributor: Rogers, Theresa
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/87543