How does Benjamin Zephaniah persuade the reader of the rights of refugees - Essay Example

The author’s attitude towards refugees is that like his own personal experience. Benjamin Zephaniah through tells that all of us are actually refugees and therefore Alem’s story is or can be our story as well. The author uses imagery, and personal experience to advocate refugees’ rights in the entire context. The most important factor through which the author persuades the reader of the rights of the refugees is by using the first person language i.e. by repeatedly saying I which engages the reader to take it personally and the reader gets the feeling how it is to be when you are a refugee in an all unknown place.

Providing the refugee a voice works as an epilogue and also offers an additional element to the author’s concerns expressed in the preface of the book. The author is compassionate about the refugees and says that “I always remind myself that each refugee is a person.” and every person have the right to be treated equally. This statement of his again persuades the reader that the refugees should be treated like normal people as even refugees are people. Benjamin Zephaniah states in the book that “we are all refugees here, that we all need help in some way.

” The emphasis here is on the point that we all are looking for protection and searching for peace in a strange and sometimes a hostile country. All of us face challenges like Alem did and have to overcome them in order to survive. The very important aspect that is the author’s closing preface engages the reader to think “what kind of refugee are you?” and the reader readily starts to think what kind he/she belongs to? Alem? Mariam? Asher? Stanley? Robert? Or the Fitzgeralds? All of these characters depicted belonged to either different races, were themselves refugees or either their ancestors had migrated to Britain.

Even Robert’s support to Alem when Alem and his father were asked to leave Britain was very overwhelming as Robert himself believed