Individual Oral Assessment – Create your own individual oral
| Global Issue | Representations of displaced people (e.g. refugees, | |
| Literary work | Sea Prayer, Khaled Hosseini (illustrated/short realistic prose poem-fiction). Tackles the issue of the dangerous Mediterranean sea crossing in the form of a letter between father and son. The letter is written prior to their attempted sea crossing. It reflects on the horrors of Syria (Homs city) and why the journey from their engulfed home has become necessary. | |
| Non-literary work | From the body of works: The Levellers music albums We The Collective; Peace; Static on the Airwaves. Screenshots of accompanying music videos. | |
| Notes for the I.O. | 1. ‘For lying before me is a tiny young life; Ended by years of hatred and crime; Killed by indifferent fanatic religious divides; They crept out of hiding and ran for their lives; Too young for the fighting, too young to take sides; Their hope for the future; Washed up there in the brine’ Lyrics – ‘The Shame’, We The Collective, The Levellers [Screenshot times: 0:32 (image 1: rounded lens); 1:20 (image 2: gate); 1:52 (image 3: history repeats); 2:14 (image 4: solitary foot)] 2. ‘For the unknown; There are no olive trees out here; For the unknown; There is no dove of peace to help to salve this fear’ Lyrics – ‘All The Unknown’, We The Collective, The Levellers 3. ‘Then he would remind us that there was a brotherhood between people who had fed from the same breast, a kinship that not even time could break.’ – The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini 4. ‘I wish you remembered the crowded lanes smelling of kibbeh and the evening walks we took with your mother around Clock Tower Square.’ – Sea Prayer, Khaled Hosseini 5. ‘I was in Lebanon this past June, and I met with Syrian refugees. And it is a hard, strange and punishing life to be a Syrian refugee in Lebanon – 1 out of 6 people on the streets is a Syrian refugee.’ – NPR interview with author Khaled Hosseini 6. “I said to you, “Hold my hand. Nothing bad will happen.” These are only words. A father’s tricks, It slays your father, your faith in him. Because all I can think tonight is how deep the sea, and how vast, how indifferent. How powerless I am to protect you from it. All I can do is pray.” – Sea Prayer, Khaled Hosseini 7. “Because you, you are precious cargo, Marwan, the most precious there ever was. I pray the sea knows this. Inshallah.” – Sea Prayer, Khaled Hosseini 8. “I have heard it said we are the uninvited. We are the unwelcome. We should take our misfortune elsewhere. But I hear your mother’s voice, over the tide. and she whispers in my ear, “Oh, but if they saw, my darling. Even half of what you have. If only they saw. They would say kinder things, surely.” – Sea Prayer, Khaled Hosseini 9. ‘Refugees in our own land; Brutalised by friendly hand’ – ‘After The Hurricane’ – Static on the Airwaves, The Levellers 10. ‘The Medusa sails to Senegal in 1816; First we lost the cabin boy,; A bad omen for us all We had to swing the lead; There were shallows all around; With a sickening break we to to Prayer, The Medusa’s run aground’ – ‘Raft of the Medusa’ – Static on the Airwaves, The Levellers | |
| Further reading | U.N.H.C.R. Goodwill Ambassadors article (retrieved: 26th June 2021); Author Khaled Hosseini’s website article (retrieved: 26th June 2021); Bloomsbury Press article and sales page (retrieved: 26th June 2021); Sea Prayer: a 360 story inspired by refugee Alan Kurdi, The Guardian online media (retrieved: 26th June 2021); Nilüfer Demir’s description of photograph of the death of Alan Kurdi, time.com (retrieved: 26th June 2021); Remembering Aylan, mural in Frankfurt am Main, next to the European Central Bank (retrieved: 26th June 2021); Artist Ai WeiWei posing as Alan Kurdi, Guardian (retrieved: 26th June 2021); Sea Prayer teachers pack, Bloomsbury Press (retrieved: 26th June 2021); | |
| Press reviews (Sea Prayer) | “As moving as any of his novels …For all its brevity packs a powerful punch” – i “Dan Williams’s watercolours are a haunting companion to the contemplative and poetic story … Opens up many powerful emotions about family, survival and childhood” – Observer “The book may be brief, but it is beautiful, poetic – a distillation of his strengths” – Sunday Times “Mr. Hosseini’s narrative gifts have deepened over the years. . . . That Mr. Hosseini manages . . . to actually succeed in spinning his characters’ lives into a deeply affecting choral work is a testament both to his intimate knowledge of their inner lives, and to his power as an old-fashioned storyteller.” – The New York Times “He stressed the importance of storytelling in understanding and overcoming the challenges of the refugee experience.” – Strife blog | |
| Press reviews (Peace) | Review: The Levellers – Peace (2020) article by Andy Thornton, Maximum Volume Music (retrieved: 26th June 2021); | |
| Remove/ do not use? | Walk with me, Imagine: Imagine music video; Flit: Migration story, Guardian news. |
ACTON28: AGAINST THE FLOW OF TRAFFIC 
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