ADDRESSING LOSS AND NOSTALGIA: TWO CUBAN DIASPORIC NOVELS OF THE NINETIES

My study analyzes two texts that are essential for understanding the Cuban literary diaspora in the 1990s. By looking at the representation of the migrant experience in both Jesus Diaz's novel La piel y la mascara (1996) and Inventario secreto de La Habana (2004) by Abilio Estevez, I examine their significance for the corpus of diasporic literature that has been central to Cuban society for the past sixty years. My article addresses not only the way in which these works are contextualized as part of a diasporic literature tradition, but also how loss and nostalgia play an influential role in shaping the identity of the migrant subject.

Ambivalence of Cosmopolitanism: A Study of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Writing

Although labeled as an immigrant writer, Ishiguro is not a typical one. His writing is not a repetition or successor of the diasporic literature. The various subjects and diversified locations of his works have been appropriately corresponded to his claim as “a kind of homeless writer”. He has always been locating himself in different cultures as well as engaged in a de-cultural writing, providing insights into the relationship between the subjective and the other, which shows his ambivalence dangling between different cultures. It is arguable that Ishiguro has several “deaths” before becoming a cosmopolitan. Nevertheless, the “killed” identity is inextirpable. The longing for subjectivity in his novels does not directly come from the cosmopolitan identity with whom he identified. Reading Ishiguro in the global context enables the detection of his compromise as a cosmopolitan writer constructed by a deliberate de-privileging and cultural alienation. Cosmopolitanism itself has been a paradoxical term in that its orientation points to the mutually inclusive “world” and “region”. Its implication is full of irreconcilable resistance and negotiation. The study is going to explore the ambivalence of cosmopolitanism in Ishiguro’s writing, to trace the progress of the making of the novelist as a cosmopolitan as well as embracing multiple cultures but denies clear boundaries, and to widen the scope of the discussion of globalization, localization, diasporic study, or postcolonial study.

NOISY SOUNDS! It’s a Listening Affair: Jazz Aesthetic, Improvisation, and Womanism in M. NourbeSe Philip’s She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks

Black writers adapted jazz music to “say the unsayable” or employed the “jazz aesthetic,” which includes improvisation, citation, and variation as a stylistic device to distance their literature from European forms of narration. These elements can also be found in M. NourbeSe Philip’s poetry collection She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks (1988) which rigorously challenges the way language and words are perceived. Philip denounces the Western ideology of non-ambiguity, dichotomies, and narration altogether by engaging the reader as jazz musicians engage their audience. What role did music play in the Black resistance? What is the “jazz aesthetic” and how is it incorporated into Black diasporic literature? How does jazz music create community and how did Black female musicians speak up in a rather hypermasculine jazz universe? How does Philip incorporate the jazz aesthetic, improvisation, and womanist thoughts in her poems? And what is the intention of noise, dissonance, and (musical) violence?

The Romani Ethos: A Transnational Approach to Romani Literature

In the context of the sociopolitical articulation of the Romani diaspora, this paper explores how its narrative is supported in four literary works written in different languages and national settings – Fires in the Dark by Louise Doughty, Camelamos Naquerar (We want to speak) by José Heredia Maya, Goddamn Gypsy by Ronald Lee, and Dites-le avec des pleurs (Say it with tears) by Mateo Maximoff – shaping a transnational/diasporicliterary production. Departing from the existence of a common Romani ethos, the analysis focuses on how these literary works shape a transnational/diasporic literature by representing the specificities of the Romani history – in particular the recollection of traumatic collective experiences – through a number of narrative strategies, such as self-representation or the depiction of cultural memory.

The Problems of Survival for the Diasporic Sri Lankan Tamil Society Depicted in the Sri Lankan Tamil Diasporic Literature

Diasporic Literature becomes a prominent place in the field of literature. So is to the Sri Lankan Tamil Diasporic Literature. It is because the Sri Lankan Tamil diasporic literature speaks about the identity of the Sri Lanka Tamils who are in the verge of losing their language and culture in the hosting countries where they seek political asylum. The present study analyses the challenges faced in the life of the displaced Tamils. Also, this study explains not only the emergence of the new life condition when the large number of Tamils displaced from Sri Lanka during the ethnic conflicts broke out after 1980’S and the challenges, and oppression that they underwent in the aspect of family, profession, education, language, and culture as they have been put into the new life condition as political refugees, but also asserts the fact that the diasporic literature is the social documentation to expose such vulnerabilities of the diasporic victims. Therefore, the present study arrives at a conclusion that there.

Rethinking Diaspora through Borders: Contemporary Somali Literature in English and Italian

This article examines contemporary Somali diasporic literature by proposing a comparative analysis of Nuruddin Farah’s Maps and a selection of texts written by authors of Somali origin currently writing in Italian: Shirin Ramzanali Fazel, Cristina Ubah Ali Farah, and Igiaba Scego. Drawing on diaspora studies, theories of narrative space, and contemporary theories of world literature, this article argues that Somali diasporic literature places at its imaginative and symbolic core the concept of the border. In so doing, Somali diasporic literature interlocks formal and narrative strategies to political and literary histories in order to challenge the naturalized perception of linguistic and territorial boundaries. Through the investigation of how processes of border production and contestation define both the narrative geographies and the dynamics of institutional recognition of Somali literature written by the members of its global diaspora, this article further suggests that Somali diasporic writers engage with border epistemologies to articulate more historically conscious modalities of belonging to place and language.

It is More than a Bunch of Numbers: Trauma, Voicing and Identity in Jennifer Chow’s The 228 Legacy

This paper explores how Jennifer Chow’s The 228 Legacy (2013) recaptures the buried hi/stories of the 228 Massacre with a trauma narrative about Silk’s deep-kept secrets. It first delineates the evolution of trauma theory and trauma fiction highlighting the significance of articulating trauma and its relevance in healing, hi/storytelling and identity construction. This demarcation shall frame a critical lens to illustrate how Chow innovates distinct insulated narratives on the protagonists to mimic intergenerational ramifications of trauma in the Lu family, to represent their psychological healing and to express the association between silence-breaking, remembering and identity construction. This critical endeavor will also demonstrate that Silk’ story of survival promises the survival of hi/story. Thus, the novel proper not only portrays the traumatic impact, a nightmarish “legacy,” of 228 but also renders Silk’s trauma narrative as the “legacy” to connect with Taiwanese heritage and construct Taiwanese American identities. Given Chow’s innovative form and unique themes about trauma and Taiwanese American diaspora, the article situates her novel in the emerging Taiwanese American literature, Asian American literature, contemporary American diasporic literature and trauma fiction.