University of Wisconsin Milwaukee UWM Digital Commons Theses and Dissertations May 2013 Emissaries of Literacy: Refugee Studies and Transnational Composition Michael T. MacDonald University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.uwm.edu/etd Part of the First and Second Language Acquisition Commons, and the Rhetoric Commons Recommended Citation MacDonald, Michael T., "Emissaries of Literacy: Refugee Studies and Transnational Composition" (2013). Theses and Dissertations. 133. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/133 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by UWM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UWM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. EMISSARIES OF LITERACY: REFUGEE STUDIES AND TRANSNATIONAL COMPOSITION by Michael T. MacDonald A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee May 2013 ABSTRACT EMISSARIES OF LITERACY: REFUGEE STUDIES AND TRANSNATIONAL COMPOSITION by Michael T. MacDonald Under the Supervision of Professor Alice Gillam “Emissaries of Literacy: Refugee Studies and Transnational Composition” uses qualitative research in refugee communities and textual analysis of stories written by and about refugees to argue that the experiences of resettled refugees, as well as the experiences of the volunteers, aid workers, tutors, and teachers who work with them, do not fit neatly within composition’s current paradigms for studying literacy in global contexts. Refugee identity and experience shows a complex link between literacy and citizenship which is complicated by the economic and geographic histories of linguistic imperialism. Refugee perspectives, and more precisely the challenges they pose, can help composition scholars and teachers rethink our established modes of inquiry. ii © Copyright by Michael T. MacDonald, 2013 All Rights Reserved iii Acknowledgements First, I have to thank my selfless parents who have worked so hard for all their lives so that I could pursue work that is meaningful to me. My sisters have also been unconditionally supportive. To Fr. Frank Toste, I owe a lifetime’s worth of anecdotes about students and writing. He taught me how to treat students with empathy and to see them as scholars in their own right. Of course, I have to thank my committed and thoughtful advisor, Alice Gillam, who supported my writing throughout this entire project and taught me what it means to enact feminism in both my writing and my everyday life. Likewise, my gracious committee members, Mary Louise Buley-Meissner, Pat Mayes, Anna Mansson McGinty, and Kumkum Sangari have each influenced my teaching, research, and writing in countless important ways. They have served as models of expert teacher-scholars. On that note, I am indebted to the other feminists in my life: Kate Haffey, Amy Daroszeski, Andrew Anastasia, Molly Tennessen, Amanda Henes, Casey O’Brien, Dani Goldstein, and especially Shereen Inayatulla – all of whom have been fierce friends and colleagues. Their voices are in this dissertation just as much as my own. Then, I have to thank Adam Ochonicky for your constant friendship, Lee Abbott for our conversations on globalization, and Leah Larson for your love and patience. And, thank you so much to the Pan-African Community Association who generously gave me their time and space to conduct my field study. Not only did the workers and students there lend me their valuable insights into refugee resettlement, but they gave me the opportunity to work in the Milwaukee refugee community, which has proved to be an invaluable experience. Lastly, to Deng, who was willing to share his story with me. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Introduction: Intersections of Composition and Refugee Studies …………………. 1 I: Transnational Composition: Key Terms for Global Turns ………………… 21 II: Making the Familiar Unfamiliar: Research Principles and Methods ……… 76 III: Sponsors of Literacy: The Lost Boys of Sudan ……………………………. 97 IV: Emissaries of Literacy: Fieldwork Interviews and Findings ………………. 147 V: Transnational Composition and Implications for Teaching ……………….. 196 Coda: The Lost Boys of Sudan Twelve Years Later ……………………………… 226 Works Cited ………………………………………………………………………… 228 Appendix A: Interview Questions ………………………………………………….. 237 Appendix B: IRB Approval Letters ………………………………………………… 240 v 1 INTRODUCTION: INTERSECTIONS OF COMPOSITION AND REFUGEE STUDIES The relationship resettled refugees have with English literacy is fraught with competing messages about the value of education. Take, for example, the contrasting views of Emmanuel Jal and K’naan, two hip-hop performers whose music addresses the role of education in the contexts of displacement. Emmanuel Jal, a self-described “war child,” was a member of the group of refugees known as the “Lost Boys of Sudan.” When he was young, he was forced from his home in South Sudan and joined the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army. He then went on to live and go to school in a refugee camp for ten years before being resettled in the U.S. K’naan is a Somali-born rapper who, as a child, was forced by civil war to leave his home in Mogadishu (Hannon). Jal’s songs and public speeches argue that education is the only means of addressing the kinds of devastating conflicts in which children are compelled to pick up arms. In the transcript to his TED Talk, Jal states, “the importance of education to me is what I’m willing to die for. I’m willing to die for this, because I know what it can do to my people. Education enlighten your brain, give you so many chances, and you’re able to survive” (“Emmanuel Jal”). For Jal, education is the only form of aid that the international community should provide. To him, “aid” has come to take on pejorative meanings: As a nation we have been crippled. For so many years we have fed on aid. You see a 20-years old, 30-years-old families in a refugee camps. They only get the food that drops from the sky, from the U.N. So these people, you’re killing a whole generation if you just give them aid. (“Emmanuel 2 Jal”) Jal sees education as providing an opportunity for people to break their dependency on aid, a dependency created by the structure of aid itself. In this sense, Jal has a liberatory view of education. K’naan’s outlook on education is starkly different, emphasizing the imperialist tendencies of education rather than its emancipatory qualities. In his song “Somalia,” K’naan asks, Do you see why it's amazing When someone comes out of such a dire situation And learns the English language Just to share his observation? Probably get a Grammy without a grammar education So fuck you school and fuck you immigration. (K’naan, “Somalia”) K’naan’s expresses a combative attitude toward education, reflecting the feelings of many refugees and immigrants from the African continent who feel the colonizing forces of the English language. While these two artists come from vastly different contexts, we can learn from the distinct ways that they speak back to the message of education. The promotion of English language education on the global scale, or what Deborah Brandt describes as “sponsorship,” typically comes in the form of companies and non-profit organizations exporting U.S. and U.K.-based, English-centric brands of education to places like refugee camps, imposing American ways of learning onto the people there. Such endeavors implement English-based models of education unidirectionally with the goal of transforming the Other. Collaborations by UNICEF and 3 the World Bank are some examples of how English education standards are exported to places identified as in “need” or in “crisis.” (see “Basic Education and Gender Equality”). As educators, we typically endorse such models because we believe English language education to be unifying when used in multilingual and multicultural contexts. We see stories like Jal’s, and we feel that we have the responsibility to fix the conditions of poverty and violence into which refugees have been thrust. A paternalistic attitude that believes education can transform the Other also assumes refugee students and writers have little to offer in return or are deficient in some way. Subsequently, refugees are thought of as passive objects of aid, a construction which fails to undo the negative connotations the word “aid” has for refugees. Local interactions between educators and resettled refugee students in both the community and the classroom are shaped by these prevailing views about education in global contexts. The contrasting perspectives of K’naan and Jal illustrate the problems of promoting education and English literacy as transformative. Like K’naan, I sympathize with peoples’ struggles in the face of inequality, especially in the contexts of forced migration. My research is critical of the hegemonic power of English literacy education, which reflects the trend in composition studies to have a global perspective toward the politics of language instruction. Yet, heeding Jal’s words, my research is not a wholesale dismissal of English education in global contexts. While recognizing that the promotion of English is a global enterprise with colonizing effects, I have found that users of the English language continue to be critical and resistant. K’naan and Jal have experienced the liberatory as well as the hegemonic effects of education. My research addresses two specific problems. First, refugee students are 4 disproportionately affected by the status of the English as a language of power. These students and writers provide perspectives that address this problem because they typically speak, read, and write in several languages. They have learned language, including English, for the purposes of resettlement, a process that reveals the high stakes of language acquisition. Each of the refugee students I have met over the years speaks four or five languages.