IN SEARCH OF HOME: It’s an iBook published on iTunes and released this week by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. I helped edit the manuscript and only a few days after finishing the process In Search of Home became available to the public. At first it didn’t seem real. It still doesn’t seem quite real.
The iBook, designed by Jake Naughton, includes a narrative by Stephanie Hanes, photographs and video by Greg Constantine, and an interactive map and timeline by Maura Youngman. The black and white photography is stunning, and the writing is graceful and eloquent. Together the words and imagery tell the stories of the stateless—their struggles and their persistence. People who cannot go to school, attend university, obtain a passport, hold a legal job, receive health benefits, get married, vote, or own property.
In discussing the violation of human rights charters, Stephanie tells us that the UN has declared statelessness a major problem and that Hillary Clinton has spoken out on the connection between statelessness and gender discrimination. However In Search of Home speaks not so much about what has been accomplished but about all that still needs to be done. Both Stephanie and Greg highlight the needs (and often the desperation) of the stateless, focusing on the lives of three groups: the Nubians from Kenya, Dominicans of Haitian descent, and the Rohingya, an ethnic group from Burma. We are told “Stateless people all live in limbo. They are nowhere people, forgotten, erased.”
Stephanie describes young Nubians who have their scholarships revoked, young Dominicans who cannot play baseball, and the Rohingya who flee to Bangladesh only to find they are unwelcome there. One stateless person explains, “If we don’t have documents, it’s as if we don’t exist.”
Greg has worked on this project for six years and has published two (print!) books on this subject: "Kenya’s Nubians: Then & Now" (2011) and "Exiled To Nowhere: Burma’s Rohingya" (2012). His faces are haunting; many are beautiful.
For more information on the Pulitzer Center project visit http://pulitzercenter.org/projects/stateless-citizenship-nationality-ken.... Or you may purchase the iBook here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/in-search-of-home/id538513339?mt=11. Thirty percent of the $4.99 purchase price will go to Apple, and the remainder to the contributing journalists—a new way to engage viewers and support journalists.
