@journalism
The Trade
@journalism · 2:56

The Refugees : Telling their stories and why it’s important | featuring JEANNE CARSTENSEN

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It's Deborah Pardase on the journalism channel of Swell. This swell cast has really been celebrating the lives of today's journalists and how they're traversing all the different platforms that they are published. Sean, if you're new to this channel, it'd be great to look at the conversations we've been having so far, really interesting, really expansive. And because Swell is swell

Award-winning journalist / New York Times, The World, The Nation, Salon; now author of upcoming book on the refugee crisis @Jcarst

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@journalism
The Trade
@journalism · 0:18

Mesa Refuge https://mesarefuge.org/residencies/

Just a correction. I said Mesa Refugee. It's actually Mesa Refuge, where she was the Peter Barnes long form journalism honoree. There. So excuse the wasn't a typo. It was a verb. I'm penning a new word
@Jcarst
Jeanne Carstensen
@Jcarst · 3:03

#refugees #migrants #peopleonthemove

Hello, Deborah. It's wonderful to talk to you here on this completely new social media platform. And I always love talking about my work and about risk refugees. You asked about a definition. Well, that's always so loaded. The difference between refugees and migrants and asylum seekers and the have real implications for people. How you get categorized officially, refugees are people fleeing war or some kind of political persecution
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@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:27

Early days of your connection with Syrian refugees

Jean, it's so interesting to allow for a little wide berth when it comes to this word. And that's why I asked you to talk about it when you talk about people who are on the move who are vulnerable, vulnerable, and they're fleeing and they're trying to get out. That's the truth right there. And how we categorize them is so secondary. And yet words are powerful, as you know, and it frames everything and sometimes in the worst way
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@Jcarst
Jeanne Carstensen
@Jcarst · 3:53
I got a sense of a great culture of very well educated people from all walks of life, and I really started to identify with their situation and what it would feel like to suddenly find yourself as a refugee. One thing I realized was none of these people five or eight years ago ever would have imagined that they would be refugees. The Assad regime was very repressive, and so many families have stories of disappeared family members. And this is for many years
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@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:16

The decision to write a book

And the book that's coming out in 2023 is the results of these feelings. And it's the work you're doing now. And for those of you listening, the book is called A Greek Tragedy, and it is going to focus on Gene's experience then and probably now because this is a living, breathing issue
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@Jcarst
Jeanne Carstensen
@Jcarst · 3:05

Refugees trapped in Idomeni

But they're inside a train car that is not moving. So that's a little bit about 2016. I'll stop. And then I'll make another recording about when I decided to write a book
@Jcarst
Jeanne Carstensen
@Jcarst · 4:01

With Yazidi refugees in Greece

But I just want to say, as a journalism, whenever I get the time to immerse myself and spend several days and really get to know some people, it's a very different experience than brief encounters. And a quick quote where I don't get as much sense. So that's the real of spending time in a region and having the time over many days, weeks, months to cover a story
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@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:58

Music + the "living" book concept

And as you continue to write the book and it's being released in 2023, I'm sure there's a gap between when you go and submit the galleys and they're done and life going on
@Jcarst
Jeanne Carstensen
@Jcarst · 1:04

Stran music recorded in a Yazidi refugee camp in Greece

So that's just a little bit of strong music. That is a strong singer, Yazidi Man, who is from Shingle, an area that's suffered genocide in 2014. And I met him in this refugee camp, and he sang this song. And Strong is a kind of oral tradition that the Yazidis have. It's a music that records own history. And they've been persecuted for a long time. So it records the different times that they've suffered genocide throughout their history
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@Jcarst
Jeanne Carstensen
@Jcarst · 2:56

"A Greek Tragedy" narrative nonfiction

And I love that idea that it would be located at a Greek University. And as for all the different storytelling that may come out around this book, for right now, I'm very focused on the narrative nonfiction form. It's very rigorous. It requires a lot of deep, deep interviewing with my main sources in the book to make sure that I can convey their experience with a lot of accuracy and a lot of detail and sometimes to the point of almost novelistic detail
@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:43

CTA suggestions + audio journal + OPEN for new voices

Maybe if you're writing about a particular character and you're sort of still working out the voice of that character or just want to talk about that character in free form that you maybe put a picture up with that person or you not even a picture, you just do an entry saying, hey, today it's June 15, 2021. I'm six months away from finishing, and I'm thinking about this particular person and you just talk about it
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