About this episode
Brynn Quick interviews Shaun Tan about his illustrated book 'The Arrival', exploring themes of migration and cultural identity.
In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Brynn Quick speaks writer, illustrator, filmmaker and Academy Award winner Shaun Tan. Shaun is best known for illustrated books that deal with social and historical subjects through dream-like imagery. His books have been widely translated throughout the world and enjoyed by readers of all ages. In the episode, Brynn and Shaun discuss his award-winning 2006 book The Arrival, which is a migrant story told as a series of wordless images. In the book, a man leaves his wife and child in an impoverished town, seeking better prospects in an unknown country on the other side of a vast ocean. He eventually finds himself in a bewildering city of foreign customs, peculiar animals, curious floating objects and indecipherable languages. With nothing more than a suitcase and a handful of currency, the immigrant must find a place to live, food to eat and some kind of gainful employment. He is helped along the way by sympathetic strangers, each carrying their own unspoken history: stories of struggle and survival in a world of incomprehensible violence, upheaval and hope. For more Language on the Move resources related to this topic, see Life…
People in this episode
Host: Brynn Quick
Guest: Shaun Tan
Topics covered
- migration
- illustration
- storytelling
- cultural identity
- social issues
Keywords
- migration
- illustration
- Shaun Tan
- The Arrival
- cultural identity
- social issues
- wordless imagery
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: The Arrival
More episodes of Language on the Move
- Islam in English · June 10, 2026 · 38 min
- Romani Grassroots Language Learning · June 3, 2026 · 31 min
- Learning Languages on Social Media · May 26, 2026 · 38 min
- Bilingual Writers and Corpus Analysis · May 5, 2026 · 1h 14m
- The (Un)imagined Work of Linguistic Inclusion · April 21, 2026 · 41 min
- Older Adults Learning English in Berlin · April 7, 2026 · 35 min
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Language on the Move podcast page.