Writing Across Worlds: Literature and Migration

303 Pages·1995·1.62 MB·English

by  Russell King

WRITING ACROSS WORLDS
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 regions 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 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 literatures,
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, Caribbean novels, Slovene emigrant texts, Japanese-Canadian writing,
migration in American novels, narratives from Australia, South Africa, Samoa
and elsewhere—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.
Russell King is Professor of Geography at the University of Sussex; John Connell
is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Sydney; Paul White
is Reader in Geography at the University of Sheffield.

WRITING ACROSS
WORLDS
Literature and migration
Edited by Russell King,
John Connell and
Paul White
London and New York
First published 1995
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Editorial matter © 1995 Russell King, John Connell and
Paul White
Individual contributions © 1995 respective contributor
Collection © 1995 Routledge
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by
any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0-203-42612-6 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-73436-X (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-10529-3
0-415-10530-7 (pbk)
CONTENTS
List of contributors vii
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xvii
1 GEOGRAPHY, LITERATURE AND MIGRATION 1
Paul White
2 LITERARY REFLECTIONS ON IRISH MIGRATION IN
THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES 20
Patrick Duffy
3 FROM PAPPKOFFER TO PLURALISM 39
Migrant writing in the German Federal Republic
Sabine Fischer and Moray McGowan
4 ‘RIVERS TO CROSS’ 57
Exile and transformation in the Caribbean migration novels
of George Lamming
Claire Alexander
5 NEGOTIATING IDENTITY IN THE METROPOLIS 70
Generational differences in South Asian British fiction
Suresht Renjen Bald
6 PERCEPTIONS OF PLACE AMONG WRITERS OF
ALGERIAN IMMIGRANT ORIGIN IN FRANCE 89
Alec Hargreaves
7 FROM FRANCITÉ TO CRÉOLITÉ 101
French West Indian literature comes home
Robert Aldrich
8 PIED-NOIR LITERATURE 125
The writing of a migratory elite
Rosemarie Jones
v
CONTENTS
9 FRIULANI NEL MONDO 141
The literature of an Italian emigrant region
Federica Scarpa
10 SUNDAY TOO FAR AWAY 162
Images of emigrant existence in the literature of Slovenes in the
United States, Canada and Australia
Jerneja Petric
11 MIGRATION IN CONTEMPORARY MALTESE FICTION 172
Arnold Cassola
12 LITERARY PERSPECTIVES ON JEWS IN BRITAIN IN
THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY 180
Stanley Waterman and Marlena Schmool
13 RETURN MIGRATION IN AMERICAN NOVELS OF THE 198
1920s AND 1930s
Neil Larry Shumsky
14 BIRDS OF PASSAGE OR SQUAWKING DUCKS 216
Writing across generations of Japanese-Canadian literature
Audrey Kobayashi
15 VULCAN’S BROOD 229
Spatial narratives of migration in Southern Africa
Jonathan Crush
16 FAR CITIES AND SILVER COUNTRIES 248
Migration to Australia in fiction and film
Roy Jones
17 IN SAMOAN WORLDS 263
Culture, migration, identity and Albert Wendt
John Connell
Index 280
vi
CONTRIBUTORS
Robert Aldrich is Associate Professor of Economic History at the University
of Sydney.
Claire Alexander is British Academy Research Fellow in the Faculty of Social
Sciences, Open University.
Suresht Renjen Bald is Professor of Politics at Willamette University, Oregon.
Arnold Cassola is Senior Lecturer in Maltese and Comparative Literature at
the University of Malta.
John Connell is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Sydney.
Jonathan Crush is Associate Professor of Geography at Queen’s University,
Kingston, Ontario.
Patrick Duffy is Associate Professor of Geography at St Patrick’s College,
Maynooth, Ireland.
Sabine Fischer is Lecturer in German for Social Scientists at the University of
Sheffield.
Alec Hargreaves is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at
Loughborough University.
Rosemarie Jones was Lecturer in French in the School of European Studies at
the University of Sussex until her death in October 1992.
Roy Jones is Associate Professor of Geography, Curtin University of Technology,
Perth, Western Australia.
vii
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Russell King is Professor of Geography, School of European Studies, University
of Sussex.
Audrey Kobayashi is Professor of Geography and Director of the Institute of
Women’s Studies, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario.
Moray McGowan is Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Sheffield.
Jerneja Petric is Associate Professor of American Literature in the Department
of English, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Federica Scarpa is Associate Professor of Translation Studies at the University
of Trieste.
Marlena Schmool is Director of the Community Research Unit, Board of
Deputies of British Jews, London.
Neil Larry Shumsky is Associate Professor of History at the Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and State University, Blacksburg, USA.
Stanley Waterman is Associate Professor of Geography and Dean of the Faculty
of Social Sciences and Mathematics, University of Haifa, Israel.
Paul White is Reader in Geography at the University of Sheffield.
viii
PREFACE
This book had its origins in a specific place at a specific time, as does every
migration event. The date was 28 March 1990 and the ‘place’ the Gozo ferry,
en route to the subsidiary island of the Maltese archipelago. Gozo is a pretty,
unpretentious Mediterranean island whose landscape is impregnated with
evidence of migration. Although many Gozitans have migrated for good, it is
the imprint of return migration that catches the eye: large American cars, out
of place on an island with just a few country lanes to drive on; newly built
houses crowned with stone eagles or kangaroos, votive symbols of successful
emigrant missions to the United States or Australia. The name-plates of such
houses—‘Maple Leaf House’, ‘Australia House’, ‘Tottenham Hotspur’, ‘God
Bless America’—are the titles of the emigrant stories of those who dwell
within.
It was on the Gozo ferry that two of the editors, Connell and King,
hatched the plot for the book, an idea sparked off by a conference paper
presented at the University of Malta the previous day by a local scholar,
Arnold Cassola. This paper, slightly revised, appears as Chapter 11 of this
book. A special note of thanks is due to Dr Cassola for his patience in
waiting five years whilst the rest of the book’s chapters were commissioned,
written, revised and edited.
Why this book? For more than a century the study of human migration
has formed an important part of the research agenda for social scientists—
particularly geographers but also sociologists, anthropologists, social
historians, statisticians, economists and others. There is a myriad of books
and research papers recording the social, demographic, cultural and
economic aspects of migration at scales ranging from the local through the
regional to the global. The approaches adopted in such studies have often
been aggregative, working from statistical data culled from censuses or other
primary surveys: where more interpretative methods have been used, these
have generally been developed on the basis of in-depth observational,
participatory or ethnographic research. This social-scientific research,
immensely rich and diversified in its own way, is often limited in its
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