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Reviews tagging 'Colonisation'
No Friend but the Mountains: The True Story of an Illegally Imprisoned Refugee by Behrouz Boochani, Omid Tofighian
2 reviews
serendipitysbooks's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
No Friend But the Mountains was an immensely challenging read but also a very important one. Behrouz Boochani is a Kurdish-Iranian journalist whose attempt to seek asylum in Australia saw him detained illegally on Manus Island, an offshore processing centre. He eventually gained refugee status in New Zealand. While held at Manus, he obtained a mobile phone and it to send out his writing, which was translated and eventually published.
The book was challenging in two main ways. The first was style. This is not simply a refugee memoir, although there are elements of that. Rather it is a rigorous examination and critique of Manus island and the treatment of refugees more broadly, one with a theoretical academic framework. It’s part journalism, part autobiography, part political commentary, part philosophy and, part psychoanalytical study, situated within a Kurdish literary tradition as well as an Australian one. It folded in racial and drcolonial analysis and introduced me to terms like kyriarchy and horrific surrealism. In other words my brain got a real work out which it wasn’t expecting.
The other challenge was of course the content. It should come as no surprise that the conditions on Manus were deliberately dehumanising and often horrific. Far more time was devoted to the issue of toileting than I really wanted to read about. But I understood why it warranted so much attention and made me realise my own privilege in being able to choose to read about it or not, rather than be forced to live it. The brutality and callousness of some guards, the Catch-22 like nature of some of the policies and the way they were designed to turn detainees against each other, the fear and uncertainty all took a toll and some detainees took their own lives.
This is not the sort of book you enjoy reading but I do think it is one that as many people as possible, especially those in and around Australia and New Zealand, should read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Emotional abuse, Racism, Self harm, Suicide, Violence, Forced institutionalization, and Colonisation
emilymckay's review against another edition
dark
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Physical abuse, Racism, Self harm, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Police brutality, Suicide attempt, Colonisation, and Injury/Injury detail