Immigrants on Chinese Television and Limitations of China’s Globalist Discourse

Traditionally perceived as a country of emigration, China has in recent years become an increasingly popular subject for immigration and diaspora studies, with an immigrant population that has been growing quietly and steadily since the 1990s. However, media representations of immigrants in China have not garnered much attention. This article provides a critical assessment of how immigrants and immigrant experience are portrayed on Chinese television, using the example of Foreigner in China (2013–19), the first-ever program on a national platform to tackle this topic. It argues that, while the program paints a rather insightful and entertaining picture of contemporary immigrant life in China, its representation of immigrants is restricted by not only the internal contradiction of the Xi administration’s globalist discourse, but also the exclusive, ethnocentric conception of Chinese nationhood, which remains the norm in a more heterogenous and globally conscious Chinese society.

America Letters as Witnesses and Agents of Change. Norwegian-American Immigrant Epistles

America Letters as Witnesses and Agents of Change. Norwegian-American Immigrant Epistles. The letters written by immigrants to their family and friends in the homeland are pieces of a mosaic that provides a wider picture of the personal stories of migration. The analysis of migration has too often focused on statistics, on the mass of people who have emigrated to the New World. However, America letters represent genuine and simple stories of individuals and reflect, in a personal manner, the way immigrants experienced the migration, as well as the way they tried to adapt to a new culture. America letters reveal the enthusiasm, courage and sense of adventure of the immigrants, but also the difficulties, disillusionment, their struggle to belong, even the despair they went through. This paper argues that America letters are witnesses of change, since the immigrants described the challenges of adjustment and acculturation in the letters they sent home, but also agents of change, as they greatly influenced the Norwegian emigration to America. Norway’s coast and valleys were teeming in the nineteenth century with accounts of the conditions in the New World as they were described in the letters sent home by the immigrants. These immigrant letters contain the testimonials of those who had chosen to emigrate and were passed on from family to family, parish to parish, village to village, convincing more and more people to leave the homeland for America. Keywords: Norwegian emigration to America, Norwegian-American, immigrant letters, America letters, immigrant experience, evolution of mass migration, personal stories of migration

Existentialist Perspective: A Study of Bharati Mukherjee’s Fiction The Holder of the World

The present study explores and analyses the existential perspective in Bharati Mukherjee’s novel The Holder of the World; she tries to represent the fluid nature of immigrants due to frequent dislocations and relocations, which facilitate the characters to transform and assimilate into a new environment. The protagonist, Hannah Easton, discards nostalgic feelings and celebrates the latest opportunities in a liberal environment. Being a fearless, brave, and bold, spirited woman, she chooses her ways of life freely and accepts the consequences frankly. Bharati Mukherjee, one of the path breaking Indian American novelists and short story writers, has constantly made efforts to voice the immigrant experience of women. Hannah initially suffers from cultural shock, but being resourceful establishes her authentic existence by understanding the new environment utilising her full potential via free choices.

Italian-American Literature

The earliest Italian American writers were immigrants who learned English and responded to their experience in America through poetry and prose, more often than not found in the early Italian language newspapers. Few had mastered the English language, and so their contributions to literature were not considered to be American. In fact, early-20th-century immigrants from Italy to the United States were hesitant to even to refer to themselves as Americans. The literature produced during this period provides great insights into the shaping of American identities and into the obstacles that these immigrants faced in pursuing their versions of the American Dream. The rise of Fascism in Italy of the 1920s–1940s would have a tremendous effect on those identities. One of the earliest Italian Americans to voice his opinion of Italian Fascism in his poetry was Arturo Giovannitti, who, with Joseph Ettor, had organized the famous 1912 Lawrence Mill Strike. National awareness of writers as Italian Americans would not begin until the likes of John Fante and Pietro di Donato published in the late 1930s. Fiction published prior to World War II primarily depicted the vexed immigrant experience of adjustment in America. The post–World War II years brought the arrival of more immigrants as serious producers of American art. Among the early writers were returning soldiers, such as Mario Puzo and Felix Stefanile, often the first of their families to be literate and attend American schools, especially with the help of the GI Bill. While many of the writers were busy capturing the disappearance of the immigrant generation, others were continuing the radical traditions. Government investigations into Communism through the House Committee on Un-American Activities sparked the ire of many Italian American artists. Increased mobility through military service and education in American schools brought Italian American writers into contact with the world outside of Little Italy and opened their imaginations and creativity to modernist experiments. Those who would gain recognition as members of the “Beat movement” responded to an apolitical complacency that seemed to set in directly after the war by fusing art and politics profoundly to affect America’s literary scene. During a time when the very definition of “American” was being challenged and changed, Italian American writers were busy exploring their own American histories. America’s postwar feminist movement had a strong effect on the daughters of the immigrants. Social action, the redefinition of American gender roles, and the shift from urban to suburban ethnicity became subjects of the writing of many young Italian Americans who watched as their families moved from working- to middle-class life. Fiction produced in the 1980s and 1990s recreated the immigrant experience from the perspective of the grandchildren, who quite often reconnected to Italy to create new identities. Contemporary Italian American literature demonstrates a growing literary tradition through a variety of styles and voices. Critical studies, beginning with Rose Basile Green’s The Italian American Novel (1974), reviews, the publication of anthologies, journals, and the creation of new presses are ample evidence that Italian American culture has gained understandings of its past as it develops a sense of a future.

A Cross-cultural, Trans-generational Portrait of Italian-Canadians in Adriana Monti’s Two Short Films

Adriana Monti is an Italian-Canadian independent producer, feminist filmmaker and author. She started her career in Italy in the late 1970s by developing a collaborative and experimental style that allowed the women object of her research to take an active and creative role in her films. This interview centers around her two recent documentaries. Family 001 and Family 005 are two shorts exploring the lives of several influential Torontonians and Montrealers of Italian origin through a series of informal interviews with women, men and members of the same family from diverse age groups. This brings a captivating and often touching perspective of the Italian-Canadian immigrant experience. In the course of this interview, Monti explores the deeper issues of identity, integration, acculturation, shifting gender roles, generational lifestyles and career choices. She also talks about the influence/interference of government in people’s lives and in respect to creativity and cultural life.

Nostos, Nostalgia and Italian Migration

The Italian immigrant experience in North America is discussed in relation to the concepts of nostos and nostalgia. The first term, normally referring to the return home from a sea voyage, is discussed comparing the foundational account of nostos, the Odyssey, with the early sojourn phase of Italian migration. By comparison, nostalgia, which can take the form either of homesickness or a longing for the past, is found in the permanent settlement phase, wherein the sense of homesickness predominates pre-World War II while that of longing for the past best defines the post-war period.

Non-Taster: A Photo Essay About a Loss of Taste and Breakfast

Non-taster is a photo essay exploring the elusive connections between the change of taste and the immigrant experience based on my story of losing taste at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. The world, which used to be dirty, viscous, and alive has rapidly become hygienic, distanced, and virtual. I documented the packaging and food sauce for breakfast via a series of scanned images and photographs during the second and third lockdown in London. The photos of spicy sauce and food packaging reveal the desire to reconnect with the senses. Alongside apathy, nostalgia, and homesickness, Non-taster laments the changes of the senses and desires in the post-pandemic period.