Reading and Expressive Writing with Traumatised Children, Young Refugees and Asylum Seekers

Marion Baraitser is an award-winning, performed and commissioned London playwright and published short story writer. She was given the British Council Travel Award to foster peace in the Mediterranean as a playwright in 1997, and has founded her own small press, Loki Books, which 'voices the voiceless.'  Marion is the writer in residence at the Baobab Centre for Young Survivors in Exile, and she lives in London with her husband, four children and grandchildren. www.marionbaraitser.com

• Foreword by Sheila Melzak. Introduction. Part 1. Terror and Telling: Entering the Young Asylum Seeker's World. 1. War trauma, abuse, and the interrupted narrative. 2. Linking external and internal worlds. 3. Self-narration and identity: therapeutic writing that reconstructs and connects. 4. 'I am neither here nor there': living in two cultures. Part 2. Mapping the Terrain. 5. Healing words have history. 6. Approaches. 7. Processes. 8. The key: selecting books. 9. Core competencies: training and organisations. 10. Ethics and good practice. Part 3. Derring-do: Entering the Symbolic World. 11. Trauma and word-play. 12. Accessing trauma through images, symbols, and metaphors. 13. Dreams and fantasies in trauma. 14. Fairy tales and myths: therapeutically 'storied pain'. 15. Using poems and stories in developmental reading/writing. Part 4. Social Dynamics. 16. The value of commonality and community. 17. Group skills. Part 5. Brain Works: Putting your Mind to It. 18. The creative brain: trauma, memory, and narrative. 19. The brain, literature and trauma. Part 6. Mapping the Research: the Efficacy of Writing on Trauma: an Evaluation. 20. Controlled laboratory studies and 'real world' projects. 21. Interapy: therapy online, future research.

The stars of Unpack My Heart with Words are four survivors of war and abuse whose words thread through Marion Baraitser's narrative. Offering both theory and practice, she takes us on an insightful journey as she delicately encourages these traumatised young people to respond to selected literature through dialogue and writing. I have a better understanding now of the term 'therapeutic resilience' and huge admiration for the Baobab Centre, its community of young survivors and therapeutic workers.