Home, Identity, and Mobility in Contemporary Diasporic Fiction

Erscheinungsjahr 2009
ISBN: 978-90-420-2690-2
Verlag: Brill | Rodopi

Buch, Englisch, Band 59, 248 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 399 g

Reihe: Textxet: Studies in Comparative Literature

This innovative volume discusses the significance of home and global mobility in contemporary diasporic fiction written in English. Through analyses of central diasporic and migrant writers in the United Kingdom and the United States, the timely volume exposes the importance of home and its reconstruction in diasporic literature in the era of globalization and increasing transnational mobility. Through wide-ranging case studies dealing with a variety of black British and ethnic American writers, Home, Identity, and Mobility in Contemporary Diasporic Fiction shows how new identities and homes are constructed in the migrants’ new homelands. The volume examines how diasporic novels inscribe hybridity and multiplicity in formerly uniform spaces and subvert traditional understandings of nation, citizenship, and history. Particular emphasis is on the ways in which diasporic fictions appropriate and transform traditional literary genres such as the Bildungsroman and the picaresque to explore the questions of migration and transformation. The authors discussed include Caryl Phillips, Jamal Mahjoub, Mike Phillips, Hari Kunzru, Kamila Shamsie, Benjamin Zephaniah, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Cynthia Kadohata, Ana Castillo, Diana Abu-Jaber, and Bharati Mukherjee. The volume is of particular interest to all scholars and students of post-colonial and ethnic literatures in English.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literatursoziologie, Gender Studies

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Diaspora, Home, Writing
Part One: Black British Perspectives
From Black Britain to the Caribbean: The Return of the (Im)Migrant in Caryl Phillips’s A State of Independence
Exile, History, and Migrancy in Jamal Mahjoub’s The Carrier
The Hybridization of Europe in Mike Phillips’s A Shadow of Myself
The Politics of Self-Making in Post-Colonial Fiction: The Bildung of Pretty Bobby in Hari Kunzru’s The Impressionist
Narratives of Diaspora and Trauma in Kamila Shamsie’s Salt and Saffron
Britain, “Home”, and Diaspora in the Refugee Novels by Benjamin Zephaniah, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and Caryl Phillips
Part Two: Diasporic Americans
The Hybridity of the Asian American Subject in Cynthia Kadohata’s The Floating World
Migration and Diaspora in Ana Castillo’s Sapogonia
Writing Diasporic Identity in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent
Transnational Travel in Bharati Mukherjee’s Desirable Daughters
Home, Transnationalism, and Transformation in Bharati Mukherjee’s Leave It to Me
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index