AustLit

'This article looks into refugee narratives produced or endorsed and promoted as children’s reading matter by international refugee relief organizations. The analysis accounts for their emergence as a separate genre with recurrent features, while questioning the assumptions that underlie their production and the aims they serve.' (Publication abstract)

'The title of my paper and the quotation by Martha Nussbaum from which it draws both invoke the double meaning of the word disturbing. In my title, disturbing functions simultaneously as an adjective that modifies the noun thoughts and as a verb that signifies a dismantling of those thoughts. The epigraph comes from Nussbaum's discussion of compassion, which serves as the core theoretical concept that informs this essay. In an Australian context, discussions of compassion arguably circulate most overtly and publicly in relation to the Australian federal government's position on asylum seekers. Over the past ten years, no issue has divided public opinion in Australia as much as the debate concerning the treatment of asylum seekers in Australia. Two picture books entitled The Island, one written and illustrated by Armin Greder and the other written by John Heffernan and illustrated by Peter Sheehan, engage with national issues concerning the arrival of immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers while also functioning as allegories for any situation in which a community mistreats an outsider.'  (Introduction)