ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how Behrouz Boochani’s work straddles the divide between memoir and protest to convey the multifaceted impacts of indefinite, mandatory detention on the physical, psychological, and emotional lives of refugees. Boochani turned to the language of poetry and philosophy, both cinematically and in print, to attempt to convey the traumatic impact of detention and its links to colonial injustice and cruelty. Boochani writes poetry, has cowritten a play, is cocreating a video installation with an Australian artist and writes songs – all of which attempt to resist the Kafkaesque world of systematic violence and abuse inside detention on Manus Island. Boochani’s smartphone has allowed him to be transported out of the detention center and into the public sphere to indict the Australian government and question the legitimacy of its moral and legal standing. Boochani wrote about the raid for the website Iranian Reporters and the story quickly went global.
