Creating a Migration Narrative from Interviews

• 1). Interview any family members who may have been immigrants or descendants of immigrants and can pass on family stories about coming to America. If you have no relatives or friends who have relatives that fit this model, ask around your community and see if you can interview anyone else.
  
  
• 2). Ask specific questions during the interview about the people involved. Were they afraid to leave a former country? Were they excited about a new life or fearful of an unfamiliar place and perhaps language? Why did the family emigrate? What was life like in the home country to force the family to leave?
  
  
• 3). Record these interviews with a video camera in order to preserve the conversation, as well as facial expressions and vocal inflections that can enhance the poignancy of the narrative.
  
  
• 4). Write the migration narrative of the family or person in question, keeping in mind that the story should be about a human experience and not just a process of emigration.
  
  

Creating a Fictional Migration Narrative

• 1). Choose the places and the time period that you want to focus on.
  
  
• 2). Do extensive research examining what life might have been like for a person in the situation about which you wish to write. For example, if you want to write a migration narrative of a person who escaped from North Korea during the regimes of Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il, research the regime and its policies. Try to understand the nature of North Korea's government and the process that refugees have to go through to escape. Keep in mind what getting caught trying to escape would signify. Research the concentration camps as well.
  
  
• 3). Read books written by North Korean refugees, such as "The Aquariums of Pyongyang," or watch documentaries such as "Korea: Out of the North" and "Kimjongilia."
  
  
• 4). Write your migration narrative. Try to inspire the reader to place himself in the shoes of the refugee. Implore the reader to consider the issue of slavery and concentration camps by focusing on the brutality of the regime in question and the refugee's motivation to leave, as well as his hopes for the future.