The Suitcase Stories: Refugee Children Reclaim their Identities
Glynis, Clacherty (2006).
Cape Town: Double Storey Books; 184 pages. $29.95. ISBN 9781919930 992.
The Suitcase Stories: Refugee Children Reclaim Their Identities, by Glynis Clacherty, in collaboration with “the Suitcase Storytellers” and Diane Welvering, includes artistic expressions and narratives by refugee children in South Africa. It is not only a forum for these children to tell their stories, but also a reflection on the use of therapeutic art as a means to address some of the psychosocial implications of conflict-induced displacement.
The book emerged from a psychosocial project using art therapy with refugee children initiated by Clacherty in 2001 in the Hillbrow suburb of Johannesburg. In collaboration with Welvering, an art teacher, Clacherty developed the “suitcase project” of the book’s title as a way for young people to express themselves and come to terms with their experiences of conflict-induced displacement. Each child chose from a collection of provided second-hand suitcases and began to artistically represent her or his story through mixed-media artwork. This art then became the focus for informal storytelling in groups and/or individually with Clacherty.
Clacherty was inspired by “Zenash,” a 14-year-old Ethiopian young woman, to record and transcribe the stories elicited from the suitcase project. As Clacherty was about to leave one day, Zenash said, “Help me to make a book about my story. People need to know why we are here. We don’t choose to come here. They need to know” (p. 13). This book is thus a response to Zenash’s request: a forum for her and other young refugees to tell their stories and display their artwork. However, it has additional, implicit objectives: to reveal racism and xenophobia within South Africa; to promote alternatives to clinical, Western psychopathological models of “mental illness”; and to demonstrate the effectiveness of participatory approaches to research and programming with refugees.
These diverse objectives and the unconventional format of the book are the source of both its strengths and weaknesses. The author has succeeded in sensitively conveying the children’s messages in their own words and artwork. As explained in the brief methodology section at the beginning of the book, Clacherty adopted a participatory approach to collecting and presenting the narratives. Stories were transcribed verbatim and edited only for “sequence and readability” (p. 6). The children and youth reviewed these narratives and decided what should be omitted for privacy or confidentiality reasons. Clacherty then skillfully contextualized these stories and artwork within broader political contexts in South Africa and the young refugees’ countries of origin, as well as within the specific processes of art therapy in the suitcase project. This latter information is particularly useful for practitioners working with refugee children and youth to understand the challenges and opportunities of this approach, as well as the long-term nature of the healing process.
While thus methodologically sound and innovative in its participatory approaches, the book lacks a solid conceptual framework. This would not necessarily be problematic if the book were simply a collection of narratives and artwork. However, the editorial information provided throughout the book, while enriching and contextualizing the stories, also makes arguments that would have been strengthened by more explicit conceptual explanations, supported by references to relevant literature. For example, the subtitle of the book suggests that the art project helped children “reclaim their identities.” This implies that refugees have ”lost” their identities, a claim refuted in some of the migration literature. Moreover, many of the children’s stories suggest that they are consciously suppressing certain identities in order to survive in the xenophobic context of South Africa. In this way, they are exhibiting agency through engagement with complex processes of identification, as explored in much of the identity literature. Clacherty also explicitly and implicitly critiques medical illness approaches to psychosocial healing. While the book provides convincing examples of an alternative approach through the suitcase project, Clacherty only briefly, and in the very last section, states the problems with traditional models and how these are addressed through initiatives like the suitcase project.
This lack of conceptual rigor, combined with the “magazine” format of the book—complete with visual representations and large text, means that it is unlikely to be taken seriously by policy-makers and academics. This is unfortunate, given the powerful messages the children’s stories and the suitcase project convey.
The Suitcase Stories provides a rich description of the experiences of refugee children in South Africa in an accessible format. As such, it will be a useful pedagogical resource for educators wishing to promote greater understanding of refugee experiences, an important reference for practitioners working with refugee children, as well as an affirmation for refugee communities themselves about the importance and relevance of their experiences.
Reviewer Information
Saint Paul University
Christina Clark-Kazak holds a doctoral degree in international development from Oxford University. She is currently Assistant Professor in Conflict Studies at Saint Paul University, Canada, where she teaches graduate courses on research methods, children and conflict, and conflict-induced migration. Her research interests include transnational political networks and the political activism of children and youth, particularly in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa.