chilout : children out of detention

If you are interested in further information about asylum seekers, refugees and related topics, here are some books, videos, and on-line publications you may be interested in.

Non-fiction, refugee writing and poetry
Fiction
On-line publications

Many readings are also available on-line via our information pages. If you have suggestions for the book list please email .

Non-fiction, refugee writing and poetry

Child Asylum Seekers: Living in Limbo

by Katherine Goode

Publisher: Joint publication by Action for Children SA, ARA and the Law Society SA, Adelaide

Released: 2002

The booklet is available from the publishers Australian Refugee Association for $10.00.

In this booklet Katherine Goode introduces us to many remarkable young people who have shown great resourcefulness and adaptability in the face of extreme conditions but who are also, all too often, traumatised and tormented by those experiences. (In order to protect their privacy the names of the asylum seekers whose stories are recounted in the booklet have been changed.) The framework of Government policies and practices are set out in the context of the growing numbers of people seeking asylum in Australia, the legal processes are explained and the observations of various professional practitioners about the health and social status of the children, both while in detention and afterwards, are recorded. There are particular sections on unaccompanied minors and the long-term effects of detention.

Australian Dream
By Mohsen Soltany
(NBP122) double CD $30.00

This double CD is a compilation of 27 poems, each read by someone with links to the refugee-rights movement, including Bryan Brown, Claudia Karvan, John Bell, Tom Keneally, Senators Andrew Bartlett and Kerry Nettle, Dr Carmen Lawrence among many others. The poems set to Mohsen's original compositions, and includes some beautiful instruments - the Iranian santor or dulcimer, saxophone, flute and violin.

To hear sample tracks go to www.stickylabel.com.au

TEACHING SURVIVORS OF TORTURE & TRAUMA: A HANDBOOK FOR TEACHERS

By Alejandra Martinez: Multicultural Education Unit, NSW TAFE Commission, 1997
ISBN 0 7310 7713X

Although predominantly useful for teachers with classrooms of refugee students, this
short publication is also helpful for anyone who has contact with refugees, child or adult.
It outlines forms of torture, physical and psychological symptoms, and the psycho-social
effects. Many refugees, with pride and courage, try and often succeed in hiding their
traumas and their memories. This introduction helps us develop and maintain our
friendships with perception and sensitivity.

Case studies and bibliography are included. Although published in 1997, the refugee
situation is still very much with us, and (sadly) this book remains relevant.

Order From:

State Equity Centre
11-13 Swanson St
ERSKINEVILLE NSW 2043
Ph. 9582 5860
Fax. 9550 2874

Pricing:

To Department of Education, or National School Network teachers: $15.00
To other organizations and individuals: $18.75
Public libraries may have, or be prepared to get, a copy. DET teachers, University
students, and educators from external institutions may borrow this, and lots of other
resources, from the State Equity Centre Library, ph. 9582 5894.

Open Boat, Barbed Wire Sky

An anthology of poems to aid refugees and asylum-seekers.

Sue Hicks and Danny Gardner (Live Poets Press) put together this collection featuring 80 poets from all over Australia and a few from the UK, US, New Zealand and one from South Africa. Phillip Adams, Hugh McKay and Peter Skrzynecki have written back cover endorsements. Artist Peter Kingston (ex the Yellow House, Luna Park artist and more) has donated front cover art.

Money raised goes to the House of Welcome in Sydney, run by an ecumenical group which helps refugees and asylum seekers with everything from phone cards and clothes to legal fees.

Price: $20 + postage

Ordering: copies can be ordered from co-founder and co-editor of Live Poets' Press, Danny Gardner at .

Journey into Darkness

By Winton Higgins

‘Journey Into Darkness is not just about the Holocaust... but it also raises important questions for us as Australians.‘ Veronica Brady

‘In this profound and compassionate book, Winton Higgins makes takes us, in true Buddhist style, into the pain and truth of our own Australian story.‘ Dorothy McRae-McMahon

Pages: 286
Publisher: Brandl & Schlesinger Pty Ltd
Released: 30 September 2003

ISBN 187604053X

Read Winton Higgins on the themes of his book at Politics in the Pub.

A Certain Maritime Incident - the sinking of SIEV X
By Tony Kevin

A Certain Maritime Incident joins the dots for the first time to reveal a disquieting record of government misconduct, including Australian Federal Police involvement in a people-smuggling ‘disruption program’, and an extraordinary combination of stone-walling and professed ignorance by a government dedicated to micro-managing the deterrence of asylum-seeker voyages.

The treatment of refugees is one of the great scandals of the modern age… With impressive courage and determination, Tony Kevin has unearthed the grim and deeply moving story he recounts in this remarkable book -- an "always powerfully contested story," and one of "durable national significance" that has "crept into the hearts and consciences of many Australians" and must find its way to the hearts and consciences of many others if these persistent and shocking crimes are to be brought to end. -Noam Chomsky

Publisher: Scribe Publications
ISBN: 1 920769 218
Price: $32.95
Release: 28 July 2004

Purchase on-line through Project SafeCom

Not Happy, John!

By Margo Kingston

"In a speech last year, the author Norman Mailer described democracy as 'a state of grace that is attained only by those countries which have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it.'"Not Happy, John!" is Margo Kingston's admirable contribution to the 'heavy labor' of maintaining democracy in Australia."
Tony Fitzgerald, QC - one of Margo's Australian heroes

Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143002589
Price: $24.95

Refuge Australia - Australia's Humanitarian Record

By Klaus Neumann.

"Refuge Australia debunks several commonly held assumptions about Australia’s humanitarian record. It demonstrates that Australian responses to various international refugee crises from the 1930s to the early 1970s were informed by self-interest rather than humanitarian concerns. It shows that Australia’s support for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the 1951 Refugees Convention was often at best half-hearted."

'Neumann reveals the good, the bad and the ugly of how our nation has responded to the desperate and the despairing since 1938. This fine book is indispensable to the debate about refugees today.’ Phillip Adams.

Order through AJustAustralia

My Life - Looking Back, My Hopes, My Dreams

This book contains the stories and illustrations from young people of all backgrounds, including refugee children. It started as an art project at Chester Hill High School. It has been funded through Bankstown City Council (Community Harmony Project), Clubs NSW,and the Permier's Department, State Government of NSW.

Publisher:

Coolaburoo Neighbourhood Centre Inc.

PO Box 668

Revesby NSW 2212

(02) 9774 2426

Released: June 2004.

Dark Dreams: Australian Refugee Stories by young writers aged 11–20 years

Edited by Sonja Dechian, Heather Millar and Eva Sallis

PB 224 PP 210 x 135 1862546290 $19.95

Children and Young Adult Fiction and True Stories

APN 9781862546295

Wakefield Press

‘Stories to melt the hardest heart.’ – Helen Garner

‘We have not been allowed to know the (recent) refugees as human beings . . . These stories change all that and force a personal response from the reader.’ – Phillip Adams

Read review.

Lives in Limbo: Voices of Refugees under Temporary Protection
MICHAEL LEACH , FETHI MANSOURI
There may be fewer boats these days but boat people have not gone away. Those recognised as genuine refugees, even by Australia’s harsh standards, live in Australia in permanent insecurity, deprived of the ordinary supports made available to immigrants, often alone without their families.
In this book, 35 such genuine refugees, all temporary protection visa (TPV) holders and mostly from Iraq and Afghanistan, talk directly about their quest for asylum in Australia. They provide poignant details of persecution in their home country, their journey to Australia, prolonged periods of mandatory detention, and life under Australia’s controversial temporary protection regime.

Publisher: UNSW Press
Download Flyer: LivesInLimboFlyer.pdf
Purchase online through UNSW Press

‘Another Country’

An anthology of refugee writing.
Guest-edited by Rosie Scott and Tom Keneally.

"When we read this collection, we are entering another country - a shadowy unfamiliar country with its own laws, language and borders. The literature of the country represented by the writers in this anthology is by turns lyrical, despairing angry, hopeful and brutal."

Publisher: Halstead Press.
Order Form: http://www.chilout.org/files/AnotherCountryOrder.pdf

Contact:

Labour Rights and Border Protection: Attempts at a Viable Life on the Temporary Protection Visa, UNSW STUDIES IN HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS IN ASIA, Monograph Number 4.
By Nigel Hoffmann

The aim of this study is to explain the political space of exclusion that the Temporary Protection Visa (TPV) produces, and the ways that asylum seekers negotiate their social conditions after being released from immigration detention. It is an ethnographic exploration of the marginalisation caused by the TPV policy, and the surprising methods through which social exclusion is imposed and reinforced. Hoffmann’s study is framed within a perspective which sees border protection as a symbolic political assertion of national sovereignty, in the face of economic globalisation. A characteristic of globalisation is an asymmetry between pressures for enhanced trade and capital mobility on the one hand, and pressures for restricted labour mobility on the other. An alternative to ever-increasing border protection, however, is a pursuit of the global enhancement of labour rights. This study documents the effects of creating a class of workers with reduced rights.

Price includes GST: $30.00 plus $5 postage & handling

Available from Industrial Relations Research Centre University of New South Wales Sydney NSW 2052.
Email:
Download order form: HRMFlyer4.doc

“Punished not Protected” Video

A Show Mercy resource to raise community awareness about life as an asylum seeker living on a temporary protection visa (TPV) in Australia.

PUNISHED NOT PROTECTED is an educational documentary series in four parts (on one tape) featuring the views of leading Australians and concerned citizens on the effects of government policy on asylum seekers and temporary protection visa holders.
Video length: 58 minutes
Cost: $38.00 includes GST

Discounts may be available on multiple copies.
Flyer: PunishedFlyer.pdf (1.4MB) Order Form: PunishedOrderForm.pdf

Available for purchase via Ronin Films:
http://www.roninfilms.com.au/feature/2391222462

Send Postal Orders to:

Ronin Films
PO Box 1005
Civic Square
Canberra ACT 2608
AUSTRALIA
Phone: 02 6248 0851
Fax: 02 6249 1640
Email:

Tampering with Asylum

By Frank Brennan

Frank Brennan argues that the Australian government's response is a massive overreaction, possible only because Australia is a remote country with few asylum seekers and no land borders. Brennan shows that Australia has set up a virtual offshore border, denying asylum seekers any access to legal protection.

Publisher: Uni. Of Queensland Press
ISBN: 0702234168

Available for purchase through ChilOut's store and other booksellers.

Dark Victory

By David Marr and Marian Wilkinson

They put lives at risk, broke the law and shattered conventions. They drew the Navy and the Army into the heart of an election campaign, muzzled the press and outwitted the courts. They defied the United Nations, antagonised the country's nearest neighbour and bribed poverty stricken Pacific States. They closed Australia to boatpeople refugees - and they won a mighty election victory. This is the inside story of the "Tampa" crisis and the political strategy that powered it; of how John Howard, who was all but finished, seized on the issue of "border protection" to start a war on immigration and bring himself back from the political dead. Award-winning writer David Marr investigative journalist Marian Wilkinson burrow deep into the world of spin-doctors, bureaucrats and the military to reveal the whole story, play by play - from the stricken asylum seekers' first sight of the red dot on the horizon that was the "Tampa" to John Howard singing the national anthem at his election victory celebrations. The book aims to bring to light the manipulation of the public, the mutability of the press and the machinations of one government in its all-consuming lust for power.

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

ISBN: 1865089397

Price: $29.95

From Nothing to Zero: Letters from Refugees in Australia's Detention Centres
Edited by Janet Austin, Preface and chapter introductions by Julian Burnside QC.

From Nothing to Zero presents edited extracts from letters written by asylum seekers held in Australia's detention centres. These letters provide a rare glimpse into the world of refugees who have fled war and persecution in their own countries. Several of the contributing detainees have been held for more than three years, often with no end to their incarceration in sight.

Published April 2003

Publisher: Lonely Planet
ISBN: 1740596684

DESERT SORROW Asylum seekers at Woomera
By Tom Mann

Desert Sorrow is the first eyewitness, insider’s account to emerge from an Australian detention centre. Tom Mann was contracted by Australasian Correctional Management to teach asylum seekers detained at Woomera during 2000 and 2001. His book gives an extraordinary and important insight into the secret daily life behind the wire of detention centres. He reveals the truths that many prefer to ignore or keep hidden. Desert Sorrow is also the first history of the Woomera Detention Centre.

Publisher: Wakefield Press (Aust) Pty Ltd, 1 The Parade West (Box 2266) Kent Town SA 5067. Telephone +61 8 8362 8800, Facsimile +61 8 8362 759.

Price: $26.95

Available for purchase through ChilOut's store.

Australian Focus on Issues: Refugees

by Jessica Perini

This book is part of a series for children (10-15 years old). The book covers the history of the plight of refugees from the first refugees in Australia (the Prussians) to today's atrocities.

Publisher: Watts Publishing Australia and New Zealand
Unit 32, 45-51 Huntley Street
Alexandria NSW 2015. Telephone. (02) 9565 5114
ISBN: 0 86415 460 7

Price: $19.95

Available for purchase through ChilOut's store.

Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Australia: Issues of Mental Health and Wellbeing
Edited by Diane Barnes

This monograph, the ninth in the series Culture and Mental Health: Current Issues in Transcultural Mental Health begins with a factual description of Australia's refugee and humanitarian program. There are four chapters looking at the vulnerability of asylum seekers in Australia: children and youth, holders of temporary protection visas, and East Timorese women. There are also six chapters that examine mental health challenges for various refugee groups in Australia : the Horn of Africa, Burma, Afghanistan, Iran and Bosnia.

Publisher: The NSW Transcultural Mental Health Centre
You can phone the TMHC on (02) 9840 3800 and speak to the resource
officer to order a copy or go to their website: www.tmhc.nsw.gov.au.

Asylum: Voices behind the razor wire
By Heather Tyler

"They stitch up their lips, go on hunger strikes, burn Australian buildings on Australian soil. Who are these desperate people and what enrages them so much? Asylum gives voice to the real people behind the sensationalism, with first-hand accounts from asylum-seekers themselves."

Heather Tyler is a regular visitor to Villawood IDC, a journalist and a friend of ChilOut.

Publisher: Lothian, Melbourne, 2003.
ISBN: 0 7344 0536 7

Price: $24.95 Pages: 288 210 x 135mm Paperback
Publication date: March 2003

Available for purchase through ChilOut's store.

Or ask at your local bookshop or purchase online through Angus and Robertson, Collins, Dymocks or Gleebooks.

Questions from the Asylum: An analysis of Australia¹s asylum and detention issues
By Susan Connelly
Order from: Susan Connelly, PO Box 299 St Marys NSW 1790 or Fax: 02 9623 1573

My Journey Behind the Veil: Conversations with Muslim Women
By Kay Rasool

When Kay Rasool came to Australia from India in 1994, she soon realised that many things which were familiar and everyday to her were attributed with strange meanings. Kay recognised that the communication gap which existed between Muslims and non-Muslims was potentially dangerous. It was this realisation that set her off on her path to encourage greater understanding of Muslims by non-Muslims.

Publisher: Lothian, Melbourne, 2002.
ISBN: 0 7344 0363 1

My forbidden face: growing up under the Taliban. A young woman's story
By Latifa with the collaboration of Chekeha Hachemi, translated by Lisa Appignanesi.
Publisher: Virago, London, 2002.
ISBN: 1860499562

Face the facts : some questions and answers about immigration, refugees and indigenous affairs
Produced by the Acting Federal Race Discrimination Commissioner.
Publisher: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Sydney, 2001.
ISBN: 0642269750

Mostly regarding indigenous issues, but includes a few succinct pages on refugees and asylum seekers.

Tales from a suitcase : the Afghan experience
By Will Davies & Andrea Bosco
Publisher: Lothian, South Melbourne, 2002.
ISBN: 0 7344 0448 4

Based on the SBS television series- very informative, varied, helpful for understanding.

The Worst of Woomera

"The Worst of Woomera" chronicles attempts by the Refugee Embassy to establish contact between detainees and members of the general public, in an effort to overcome misconceptions, and to put a human face to the people housed there. The text, interspersed with personal profiles, covers events from the Good Friday breakout earlier this year, to the hunger-strike breakout on June 28th.

This is the first such collection of case histories to be made available to the public. Names have been changed, but details about individual detainees are genuine. Lawyers representing some of the people in the book are fearful that the Department of Immigration may give prejudicial treatment to people featured in the book, as punishment for letting their stories be heard. However, because most of these people have exhausted all appeals anyway, they have given permission for their stories to be told.

48-page booklet. To order a copy contact Dave McKay email: phone: (02) 4954-2590 mobile: 0422-142-702

The Truth Hurts

"The Truth Hurts" is a booklet addressing some of the myths and misconceptions currently circulating about asylum seekers. Each myth is illustrated with a case history, and it is written in plain English. Copies are available for $3 per booklet from the Centre for Refugee Research (CRR) at the University of New South Wales. For information on ordering copies of the booklet call the centre on (02) 9385 1961 or send an email to .

Fiction

Marsh Birds

By Eva Sallis

Paperback, 264 pages

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

ISBN: 1741146003

This is the story of Dhurgham, a young Iraqi who has lost everything. A powerful, exquisitely written novel that gives a human face to the experiences of exile and migration.

Walk In my Shoes

By Evans Alwyn

Children's Paperback, 360 pages
Publisher: Puffin, August 2004
ISBN: 0143002317

After a perilous and terrifying escape from war-torn Afghanistan, Gulness and her family find themselves in Australia, a place they know nothing about. They are exhausted and traumatised, but so full of hope. At last, somewhere safe to call home. But their struggle isn't over yet. They are confined in a detention centre for asylum seekers, and forced to prove their refugee status. As days drag into weeks and months, Gulnessa is determined to stay strong. She must keep her family together, and fight for her friend Abdul - with whom she has secretly fallen in love. She cannot give up hope for a second chance at life, and the opportunity to build a future in a new land.

On-line publications

Axis of Logic

"www.axisoflogic.com is comprised of an all-volunteer group of writers and editors who are committed to publishing news and commentary that is often not presented in the major news outlets."

New Matilda

"A weekly newsletter of news, analysis and policy for people who want to hear a different tune."

OzSpirit

Issue 83 - Refugees

OzSpirit is produced by Caritas Australia, the Catholic Church's agency for aid and development. "OzSpirit is a free, weekly on-line magazine that provides students, teachers, parishes and community groups with a wealth of up-to-date material about issues of spirituality, justice and global education. OzSpirit also provides ideas about how we can all help to alleviate injustice in our world."

chilout »be informed »book list

Non-fiction, refugee writing and poetry

Fiction

On-line publications