“So, here you are
too foreign for home
too foreign for here.
Never enough for both.”
~Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada
Home. What is home? Where is home? Is the combination of a few letters, a proper noun, written at the top of your birth certificate? Is home an institution? If yes, is it all in one’s mental realm? Does home even exist? Are humans capable of having multiple homes? So many questions come to the fore when we think about home. It is such a layered concept. And if that was not enough already, it got superimposed with identity. For many, making sense of home may be as easy and effortless as breathing. For millions, it is an elusive dream – a lost cause.
Tezhib’s new blog section – On the Other Side of Hope: Refugees and Displacement Narratives – aims to underscore and highlight people’s struggles to find a home, their battles with their identity, and everything that is unsaid and unheard within the discourse of refugees. From the stories of displaced Afghans to the ones in which Palestinians write their hearts out – Tezhib intends to present an unbiased and unprejudiced narrative whose sole aim is to humanize the struggles of refugees and see them beyond numbers.
This blog series accepts submissions from authors with lived experience of forced displacement (e.g., identifying as a current or former refugee, asylum seeker, IDP, or stateless person) on a rolling basis. We encourage submissions from all walks of life (students, parents, employers, employees, business owners, or academics) and from all parts of the world, to write about their own or their community’s lived experiences.
Your submissions could be in the form of real-life stories, independent accounts, or primary research. The themes of this series include home, identity, stereotypes, myths, access to employment and social services, displacement, reparative justice, refugees as decision-makers, and more.
The submission should not exceed 1200 words. The preferred language of submission is American English.
Tezhib is open to providing free of cost brainstorming services to all potential authors through a series of online sessions where our editors will help authors to draft topics or design research questions for the blog submission.
The writing, submission, and publication process would require constant email or online work session engagements between the author and assigned editor as per the author’s preferences.
Before publication, the blog’s final draft will require the author’s formal review. The author has the right to make further or undo edits to maintain their writing and narration style.
The author should attach the submission in a word file (.docx) to the email address mentioned below.
Please do not hesitate to submit your work at tezhib.idrac@habib.edu.pk, with the subject line “Refugee and Displacement Series Submission”.
For brainstorming services, you may connect with our editors through the same email address.