1st Edition

Writing Across Worlds Literature and Migration

Edited By John Connell, Russell King, Paul White Copyright 1996
    304 Pages
    by Routledge

    304 Pages
    by Routledge

    International migration has long been a dominant feature of world literature from both post-industrial and developing countries. The increasing demands of the global economic system and continued political instability in many of the world's region have highlighted this shifting map of the world's peoples.
    Yet, political concern for the larger scale economic and social impact of migration has effectively obscured the nature of the migratory nature of the migratory experience itself, the emotions and practicalities of departure, travel, arrival and the attempt to rebuild a home.
    Writing Across Worlds explores an extraordinary range of migration literaturesm from letters and diaries to journalistic articles, autobiographies and fiction, in order to analyse the reality of the migrant's experience. The sheer range of writings - Irish, Friulian, Italian, Jewish and South Asian British, Gastarbeiter literature from Germany, Pied noir, French-Algerian and French West Indian writing, Carribbean novels, Slovene emigrant texts, Japanese-Canadian writing, migration in American novels, narratives from Australia, South Africa, Samoa and others - illustrate the diversity of global migratory experience and emphasise the social context of literature.
    The geographic and literary range of Writing Across Worlds makes this collection an invaluable analysis of migration, giving voice to the hope, pain, nostalgia and triumph of lives lived in other places.

    Preface 1. Geography, literature and migration: introductory themes 2. Literary reflections on Irish migration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries 3. From Pappkoffer to pluralism: migrant writing in the German Federal Republic 4.`Rivers to cross': exile and transformation in the Carribbean migration novels of George Lamming 5. Negotiating identity in the metropolis: generational difficulties in South Asian British fiction 6. Perceptions of place among writers of Algerian immigrant origin in France 7. From Francite to Creolite: French West Indian Literature come home 8. Pied-Noir literature: the writing of a migratory elite 9. Friulani nel Mondo: the literature of an Italian emigrant region 10. Sunday too far away: images of emigrant existence in the literature of Slovenes in the United States, Canada and Australia 11. Migration in contemporary Maltese fiction 12. Literary perspectives on Jews in Britain in the early twentieth century 13. The depiction of return migration in American novels of the 1920s and 1930s 14. Birds of passage or squawking ducks: writing across generations of Japanese-Canadian literature 15. Vulcan's brood: spatial narratives of migration in Southern Africa 16. Far cities and silver countries: migration to Australia in fiction and film 17. In Samoan worlds: culture, migration, identity and Albert Wendt Index

    Biography

    John Connell, Russell King, Paul White

    'A very enjoyable and thought provoking read' - Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies