Teen refugee earns GG nomination
To be nominated for the Governor- General’s Award for literature at the age of 17 would be a remarkable accomplishment for anyone. No wonder Abu Bakr al Rabeeah isn’t quite over the shock of learning that his first book, Homes: A Refugee Story, was just shortlisted for the Governor- General’s Award for non-fiction.
“I actually just woke up and I saw lots of emails and messages and I was like, ‘What’s going on?’” he told me when I caught up with him Wednesday during his lunch break from his Grade 12 classes at M. E. LaZerte High School.
“Honestly, it’s unbelievable. I haven’t told my parents yet. They have no idea, honestly. I’m just trying to understand it myself, for now.”
The Edmonton teen only began learning English three-and-ahalf years ago when he and his family first arrived in Edmonton as refugees.
The family was originally from Basra, Iraq.
They fled the war and chaos there for Syria, only to find themselves caught up, in turn, in Syria’s civil war.
Refugees twice over, they eventually found sanctuary in Edmonton.
For a teenager starting school here, knowing only a few words of English was a huge challenge. Enter Winnie Yeung, 36. In September 2015, she’d just been hired as a new English as a second language teacher and language arts teacher at Highlands Junior High.
Abu Bakr was one of her first students.
“He’s a great storyteller,” she told me, “in the sense that you can see and feel that this is his truth. There is a warmth and a light that comes off this kid.”
Abu Bakr spoke very limited English. But he explained to Yeung that he wanted to be able to tell his classmates his story.
Together they started working on writing and public speaking exercises, getting him to write down some of his experiences in Syria. But as they talked and worked together, using Google Translate to communicate, Yeung wanted to do more. She started crafting some of her student’s stories into a little book. At first, she wrote them in a fictional form, to protect his identity and that of his family. Then she selfpublished the book as a short novel.
But Yeung wasn’t satisfied. She sent the manuscript to Freehand Books in Calgary. And editors there saw something different. They asked Abu Bakr and Yeung to reshape the book into a work of creative non-fiction, telling a true story, but with a novelist’s narrative art.
“Part of what makes the book so strong is that it’s real,” said Freehand’s managing editor, Kelsey Attard. “But reshaping the book was an involved and intensive process.”
Working with Freehand editor Barbara Scott, Yeung spent a year rewriting, doing more interviews with Abu Bakr’s extended family, cross-checking dates with news accounts, fact-checking, wherever possible, to ensure the accuracy of Abu Bakr’s memories of his Syrian childhood.
“It’s not a journalistic piece of work. I don’t claim to be a journalist. But this is one family’s truth. This is also not a brutal account of the atrocities of the Syrian conflict. It’s the story of one family, and how they got through it,” Yeung said.
Although Abu Bakr gets top billing on the book jacket, it was Yeung who crafted the book based on her extensive interviews with her student and his family. The words are hers. The truth, she insists, is his.
“This is Abu Bakr’s story. He is the teller,” she said.
But we shouldn’t let Yeung underplay her role as the person who put the story on the page. This nomination belongs equally to her. “Most of the hard work was Miss Winnie Yeung,” Abu Bakr told me.
When I asked him how he’d been celebrating, he said simply, “I must see my teacher first. We will celebrate together.”
But Yeung is in shock, too. “It’s pretty surreal. Never, ever, in all my big hopes for this book did I think that this could happen. It’s beyond my wildest dreams.”
(Wednesday was a good day for young Edmonton writers. Edmonton poet Billy-Ray Belcourt, who has won so many other literary prizes this year, was also nominated for the Governor General’s Award for poetry for his collection, This Wound is a World. )
As for Abu Bakr, he wants to finish Grade 12, improve his English, and then study political science at university. But before that? He and his former teacher will be on a Western Canada book tour. It’s good practice for English, he told me. And, he said, it’s a good chance to tell more people in his new country about the Syria he left behind.
A PERSONAL NOTE
This is (likely) my final column for the Edmonton Journal. I was honoured Wednesday morning when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced my appointment as an independent senator.
Leaving the Journal, and leaving journalism, won’t be easy for me. But I can’t think of a better way to end my 23 years here than with this story of Yeung and Abu Bakr. Their unlikely friendship and their creative accomplishments symbolize for me everything that is best about Edmonton.
Theirs is a story about the openness and diversity that makes this city great. It’s a story about the importance of public education and about the value of the arts. And it’s a story about courage and hope and connection through words. I’m honoured to have been able to share it with you.
For 23 years, you’ve all been my teachers as I’ve struggled to find the right words to tell your stories. Thank you for your patience when I’ve faltered and for your enthusiasm when I’ve got it right. I hope to take the lessons you’ve taught me to Ottawa, and to go on advocating for the best interests of our city and province.