Labels: art, links

If I had given into despair, everything would have been lost. So up until the last moment, I'll hold my head high and keep laughing because they won't get the best of me. As long as you're alive you can protest and shout, yet laughter is the most subversive weapon of all.

Marjane Satrapi

Labels: art, film, quotes

Given my preoccupation with ‘strangers in strange lands’, this was an obvious subject to tackle, a story about somebody leaving their home to find a new life in an unseen country, where even the most basic details of ordinary life are strange, confronting or confusing – not to mention beyond the grasp of language. It’s a scenario I had been thinking about for a number of years before it crystallised into some kind of narrative form.

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In researching a variety of other migrant stories, beginning with post-war Australia and then broadening out to periods of mass-migration to the US around 1900, it was the day to day details that seemed most telling and suggested some common, universal human experiences. I was reminded that migration is a fundamental part of human history, both in the distant and recent past. On gathering further anecdotes of overseas-born friends – and my partner who comes from Finland – as well as looking at old photographs and documents, I became aware of the many common problems faced by all migrants, regardless of nationality and destination: grappling with language difficulties, home-sickness, poverty, a loss of social status and recognisable qualifications, not to mention the separation from family.

Labels: art, fiction

Labels: art