Identity and Diasporic Trauma in Mira Jacob's “The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing”

This article explores the assimilation politics in Mira Jacob’s Novel The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing (2013). The intersection of memory, trauma, and mourning with reference to immigrant experience is discussed. In terms of assimilation, Barkan’s six stage model is critiqued, and diasporic ‘hybridity’ is proposed as an alternative to the notion of total assimilation. In the analysis of traumatic experience, the paper makes reference to Caruth’s formulations of the ‘abreactive model’. The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing (2013) is a transcultural text that represents the gap that truly exists between the first-generation immigrants and their offspring. It is a typical trauma novel featuring timeless and unspeakable experiences. The novel does not present a postcolonial collective trauma but invariably an example of diasporic imagined trauma. By presenting two contrasting generations in her novel, Mira Jacob attempts to highlight the dilemmas that baffle diasporas in the United States particularly of those that resist assimilation. Much of the narrative projects the haunting presence of home, and the anguish of personal loss experienced by first generation immigrants. Moreover, the novel questions the nostalgic and romantic engagements with the past and it promotes a bold affirmation of the culture of the adopted land. In other words, Mira Jacob calls for more genuine engagements with the new culture that the second and the third-generation immigrants are more exposed to than their home culture because their in-between status leaves them with no choice.

Download Full-text

Rewriting the memory of immigration: Samuel Zaoui’s Saint Denis bout du monde

Reimagining North African immigration ◽

10.7228/manchester/9780719099489.003.0013 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 212-231

Author(s):

Mireille Le Breton

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

First Generation ◽

The Novel ◽

North African ◽

First Generation Immigrants ◽

Migrant Literature ◽

The Past ◽

African Immigration ◽

Economic Boom

This article reflects on the memory of North-African immigration in twentieth-century France, and focuses more particularly on the fate of the chibanis, the first generation of immigrants who came from Algeria to work in France during the economic boom of the post WWII era. Grounded in the works of historians of memory Nora and Ricoeur, this chapter analyzes how Samuel Zaoui’s novel Saint Denis Bout du monde portrays first-generation immigrants in a new light. Indeed, moving away from the traditional, largely negative, stories of loss, the novel partakes of new narratives of regaining and repairing, what Susan Ireland calls ‘a kind of Narrative recovery.’ The novel can be read as the story of the forgotten generation, which repairs collective amnesia as it regains memory, in order to reconcile itself with the past. This article goes further to show how a new narrative of reconciliation is able to trigger the shift in the episteme of migrant literature.

Download Full-text

Postcolonial Trauma in the 21st-Century English Female Fiction

Imagologiya i komparativistika ◽

10.17223/24099554/15/5 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 89-104

Author(s):

Lilia F. Khabibullina ◽

Keyword(s):

21St Century ◽

First Generation ◽

Real Life ◽

Historical Trauma ◽

Psychological Problem ◽

Traumatic Experience ◽

The Novel ◽

The Past ◽

Family Chronicle ◽

White Teeth

The postcolonial fiction of the 21st century has developed a new version of family chronicle depicting the life of several generations of migrants to demonstrate the complexity of their experience, different for each generation. This article aims at investigating this tradition from the perspective of three urgent problems: trauma, postcolonial experience, and the “female” theme. The author uses the most illustrative modern women’s postcolonial writings (Z. Smith, Ju. Chang) to show the types of trauma featured in postcolonial literature as well as the change in the character of traumatic experience, including the migrant’s automythologization from generation to generation. There are several types of trauma, or stages experienced by migrants: historical, migration and selfidentification, more or less correlated with three generations of migrants. Historical trauma is the most severe and most often insurmountable for the first generation. It generates a myth about the past, terrible or beautiful, depending on the writer’s intention realized at the level of the writer or the characters. A most expanded form of this trauma can be found in the novel Wild Swans by Jung Chang, where the “female” experience underlines the severity of the historical situation in the homeland of migrants. The trauma of migration manifests itself as a situation of deterritorialization, lack of place, when the experience of the past dominates and prevents the migrants from adapting to a new life. This situation is clearly illustrated in the novel White Teeth by Z. Smith, where the first generation of migrants cannot cope with the effects of trauma. The trauma of selfidentification promotes a fictitious identity in the younger generation of migrants. Unable to join real life communities, they create automyths, joining fictional communities based on cultural myths (Muslim organizations, rap culture, environmental organizations). Such examples can be found in Z. Smith’s White Teeth and On Beauty. Thus, the problem of trauma undergoes erosion, because, strictly speaking, with each new generation, the event experienced as traumatic is less worth designating as such. Compared to historical trauma or the trauma of migration, trauma of self-identification is rather a psychological problem that affects the emotional sphere and is quite survivable for most of the characters.

Download Full-text

Positions In-Between

Trans-Pacific Japanese American Studies ◽

10.21313/hawaii/9780824847586.003.0021 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Duncan Ryûken Williams

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

First Generation ◽

American Studies ◽

The United States ◽

Japanese American ◽

Know How ◽

Green Card ◽

The Past ◽

Permanent Residency ◽

Registration Card

In reflecting on my positionality vis-à-vis Japanese American studies, one of the first things that come to mind is the multiplicity of positions that make up my identity. I am neither fully Japanese nor American nor Japanese American. Given that my father is British and my mother Japanese, my heritage is at least dual. Given that I was born and brought up in Japan initially as a British citizen with an alien registration card and then as a dual citizen from fifteen to twenty years old, and since twenty, as solely a Japanese citizen, it is sometimes hard to know how to define my position to Japanese America. Yes, I have lived and worked in the United States on various visas, and more recently, with a green card for the past twenty-five years. So I suppose that as a person with a Japanese passport who has permanent residency in the United States, I am technically an Issei, a first-generation Japanese immigrant to the United States....

Download Full-text

The Immigrant Family: Cultural Legacies and Cultural Changes

International Migration Review ◽

10.1177/019791839703100407 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 31 (4) ◽

pp. 961-974 ◽

Cited By ~ 61

Author(s):

Nancy Foner

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

First Generation ◽

The United States ◽

Immigrant Family ◽

Cultural Meanings ◽

Cultural Changes ◽

First Generation Immigrants ◽

Family Patterns ◽

Cultural Legacies ◽

The Way

This article examines the way family and kinship patterns change in the process of immigration — and why. Offering an interpretative synthesis, it emphasizes the way first generation immigrants to the United States fuse together the old and new to create a new kind of family life. The family is seen as a place where there is a dynamic interplay between structure, culture, and agency. New immigrant family patterns are shaped by cultural meanings and social practices immigrants bring with them from their home countries as well as social, economic and cultural forces in the United States.

Download Full-text

Serving Multicultural Elders: Recommendations for Helping Professionals

Care Management Journals ◽

10.1891/1521-0987.12.2.42 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

pp. 42-49 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Hilary N. Weaver

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Cultural Identity ◽

Old Age ◽

First Generation ◽

The United States ◽

Helping Professionals ◽

American Population ◽

Cultural Backgrounds ◽

First Generation Immigrants ◽

Demographic Patterns

As demographic patterns shift in the United States, helping professionals are likely to see more clients of color, including those who are first-generation immigrants. Additionally, given the aging of the American population, helping professionals are likely to encounter more elderly clients and their families. It is crucial that helping professionals be prepared to respond to elders from various cultural populations in effective and respectful ways. This article gives an overview of how old age may interact with cultural identity. This information can be useful for professionals in many different settings working with elders from various cultural backgrounds.

Download Full-text

The Role of Recreational Sport in the Adaptation of First Generation Immigrants in the United States

Journal of Leisure Research ◽

10.1080/00222216.2004.11950029 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 36 (3) ◽

pp. 379-413 ◽

Cited By ~ 80

Author(s):

Monika Stodolska ◽

Konstantinos Alexandris

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

First Generation ◽

The United States ◽

First Generation Immigrants ◽

Recreational Sport

Download Full-text

Aspiration and Opportunity: First-Generation Immigrants and Refugees at Community College

Community College Review ◽

10.1177/00915521211026680 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 009155212110266

Author(s):

Aaron Leo

Keyword(s):

College Students ◽

Community College ◽

Community Colleges ◽

Community College Students ◽

First Generation ◽

Participant Observation ◽

The United States ◽

Refugee Students ◽

First Generation Immigrants ◽

Immigrant And Refugee

Objective: This article explores the experiences of 32 first-generation immigrant and refugee students as they transition into and out of community college. The challenges students face and the resources on which they draw in their educational pursuits are viewed through Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital. Method: This project utilizes an applied ethnographic approach that primarily elicited participant-observation and interview data. Results: Findings demonstrate that prospective community college students articulated uncertainty about the college process and concern over the quality of community colleges. Current and former community college students validated these concerns as they described their struggles to overcome both in- and out-of-school challenges. In many cases, such obstacles resulted in the leveling of previously high aspirations. Contribution: Although the growing number of immigrant and refugee students in the United States are disproportionately represented at community colleges, little is known about their experiences in these institutions. This article adds to our understanding of immigrant and refugee students’ experiences in community colleges through their own words.

Download Full-text

Present-Tense Narration and Representing Trauma in Anne Enright’s The Gathering

KronoScope ◽

10.1163/15685241-12341443 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 19 (2) ◽

pp. 212-227

Author(s):

Karen Anne McCarthy

Keyword(s):

Traumatic Experience ◽

The Novel ◽

Her Family ◽

The Past ◽

Sexually Assaulted ◽

Present Tense

AbstractIn this article, I engage with the present-tense narration in Anne Enright’s novel, The Gathering. The narrator, Veronica Hegarty, is tasked with assembling her family for a wake after the suicide of her closest brother Liam. What his death unleashes in her is a compulsion to write down an “uncertain event,” which may or “may not have happened,” in which Liam was sexually assaulted as a child. The narrative suggests that Veronica witnessed this “event” and, in line with the aporetic nature of traumatic experience, did not register it as such. The narrative temporal strategy, as this article will demonstrate, is key to the author’s representation of the “event” which, due to its traumatic nature, is always of the present, and never successfully relegated to the past. I also explore the ways in which the novel suggests a healing which can be neither contained nor enacted within the confines of this overtly present-tense narrative.

Download Full-text

Teju Cole's Nigeria and the open cities of New York and Brussels

Acta Neophilologica ◽

10.4312/an.46.1-2.3-11 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 46 (1-2) ◽

pp. 3-11

Author(s):

Igor Maver

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

New York ◽

New York City ◽

The United States ◽

The Novel ◽

The Past ◽

History Of ◽

History Of Violence ◽

Past Experiences ◽

The City

The novel Open City (2011) by the Nigerian-born and raised author Teju Cole isset in New York City, where he has lived since 1992. The narrator and protagonist of the book, the young Nigerian doctor Julius in is a veritable flâneur in the Big Apple, who is observing the rapidly changing multiethnic character of the city and meditating on (his) history and culture, identity and solitude, and the world beyond the United States, with which it is interconnected through the global history of violence and pain. He is juxtaposing the past and the present, the seemingly borderless open city of New York, Nigeria, and the various European locales, particularly Brussels.Thenovel, although set in the United States, is constantly interspersed with his recollections of his past experiences conditioned by hiscomplex hybrid Nigerian-European-American identity.

Download Full-text