Why Am I Here?

I’m here to share writings that critique ‘refugee the Gaze’—narratives that don’t fit neatly into boxes but instead question how we are taught to see.

Hello,

My is name is Gabriel Ndayishimiye—but you can just call me Gaby.

Welcome to my Substack! I am thrilled to share this space with you, a place dedicated to exploring the complexities, triumphs, and sometimes hard-to-swallow truths of the refugee experience. Through this platform, I hope to build a community where the complexity of the refugee experience is acknowledged and the limitations of common, simplified, narratives are questioned.

Why Did I Start This Substack?

I launched this Substack to carve out space for stories that persistently occupy the margins. In the fields of humanitarianism and mainstream media, depictions of displacement are saturated with oversimplifications that often reduce refugee lives to the familiar tropes of the survivor, the grateful immigrant, or the eternal victim. These portrayals, even when well-intentioned, rarely grasp the full complexity of each journey. They conform to a comfortable familiar lens, that offers reassurance rather than insight. I started this platform to push back against these narratives, to dismantle the inherited colonial frames that continue to define what it means to be displaced in neocolonial refugee protection frameworks.

In the mainstream publishing industry, certain narratives find easy passage, while others remain unseen, relegated to the margins of our screens and bookshelves. This erasure shapes how refugees are perceived—often through a limiting gaze of helplessness or perpetual gratitude. These simplified stories serve the interests of the privileged gaze looking in, pacifying curiosity without disturbing comfort, all while silencing those who live these realities daily.

My Substack exists to challenge these entrenched views. Here, we’ll navigate the layered, complex realities of migration, resilience, and identity—free from the expectations of the dominant gaze. We’ll explore what it means to belong, to resist, and to endure, giving voice to the experiences that defy simplification. This is a space for narratives that reclaim their own stories, that resist the confines of passive consumption, and that invite us to question, to see anew, and to understand.

Can We See Beyond the Gaze? A Critique of the Mainstream Refugee Narrative

What is referred to as the "refugee gaze" is a lens, a way of seeing, imposed on displaced individuals, shaped by dominant narratives in media, humanitarian spaces, and even academia. Although often framed as empathy, these portrayals frequently reduce refugees to one-dimensional tropes—grateful survivors, silent victims, or symbols of resilience—designed more to reassure than to challenge. In this process, refugees are stripped of their layered histories, resistances, and identities, becoming passive reflections of the observer’s gaze.

Particularly in academic discourse, far from immune, this narrow view is often reinforced, especially when refugee lives are framed as case studies or theoretical examples that satisfy intellectual curiosity yet fail to confront the depth of lived experience. It is essential to understand that research can dissect and categorize without truly giving voice or agency to those it studies. In such cases, these studies reinforce stereotypes, all while overlooking the multifaceted realities of displacement.

Through this platform, we will interrogate how the refugee gaze manifests across media, humanitarian, and academic spaces. We will examine how refugee gaze narratives are created and question whose interests they serve. Together, we will explore stories that resist simplification, reclaim truths, and demand narratives that honor the full spectrum of voices that defy reduction.

My Journey into Critical Refugee Narratives

As a former refugee, I understand the burden of watching one’s story reshaped by distant forces. I have felt the weight of stereotypes, the relentless simplification that reduces complex lives to palatable, marketable symbols. To be cast as a single story—grateful immigrant, resilient survivor, voiceless victim—is a familiar experience and a stifling one. Over time, this relentless framing compelled me to engage deeply with postcolonial theory and critical literature on displacement and exile experiences. My aim was to gather tools and resources that I could use to explore the possibilities of stories existing beyond the reach of the colonial gaze. A critical part of this exploration was questioning whether such stories even exist—if narratives could truly emerge unfiltered, unbound by the dominant lens, and rooted in their own truths.

My journey led to the founding of LivenBooks, a nonprofit publisher devoted to amplifying voices that refuse to conform. LivenBooks is dedicated to serving those of us whose stories rarely make the headlines, whose lives disrupt the comfortable frameworks of dominant culture. By offering space for narratives that reject simplification and giving voice to refugee and immigrant stories on their own terms, free from the expectations of an outside gaze LivenBooks is becoming a necessary act of resistance. The stories we aim to publish exist in their full depth, rooted in resilience, defiance, and identities reclaimed from the margins.

The LivenBooks project is therefore more than publishing—it is a pushback, a way to carve out spaces where stories about experiences can exist whole, without permission, unmediated by the filters of power. Through LivenBooks, we hope to dismantle the frames that contain us. We hope to honor voices that resist, endure, and disrupt the refugee gaze that would render them small.

What Can You Expect Here?

Through this Substack, I aim to dismantle surface-level narratives and offer perspectives that challenge and disrupt the refugee gaze. You can expect articles that critique familiar tropes in refugee storytelling, deep explorations into postcolonial theory and critical refugee writing, and reflections on the work of creating spaces for stories of displacement that resist reduction.

This space will also feature book, film, and documentary reviews that question dominant portrayals, author interviews that go beyond the polished public image, and podcast discussions that delve into the complexities of migration, identity, and resilience. I will share updates from LivenBooks projects, offer insights from critical refugee literature, and provide sneak peeks into upcoming works and events.

Here, we engage with stories that defy simplification, exploring voices that stand firm against the dominant gaze. Whether you are here to learn, to unlearn, or to join a community that values these perspectives, I hope you will find this space meaningful. This Substack is more than a blog; it is a reclamation of narrative, a redefinition of what it means to be truly “seen,” and a celebration of voices that push back against erasure.

An Invitation

Join me!

Let us start a conversation. What brings you to this space? Are there topics you would like to see covered? I would love to hear your thoughts, experiences, or even your challenges with these ideas.

Thank you for joining me on this journey. Here’s to stories that defy expectations, celebrate complexity, and demand to be told.

Warmly,
Gaby