Between two worlds: a study of migrant writers in New Zealand

<p>This thesis begins with a consideration of what constitutes migrant writing, and points to the difficulties in arriving at an absolute definition. Some justification is given for the fact that the ensuing discussion concerns short stories alone, and some of the particular qualities of the short story which make it an appropriate form for migrant literature are examined. The first chapter also makes a brief survey of the context for migrant writing within New Zealand literature, and compares the work of several short story writers, migrant and non-migrant. The work of two New Zealand migrant short story writers is discussed closely in the chapters that follow: Amelia Batistich's stories are examined in Chapter Two, and Yvonne du Fresne's in Chapter Three. In each discussion, formal qualities are given equal attention as matters of content and theme. The final chapter attempts to draw connections between the work of these two writers and the problems of definition raised in the first chapter. Consideration is also given to the attitudes and expectations of readers of migrant fiction. The appendices to the thesis contain biographies of Amelia Batistich and Yvonne du Fresne, and transcripts of conversations with them. The conversations were recorded in 1984, and have been lightly edited. A bibliography is included which provides a selective guide to the two authors published and unpublished work, and a full account of all secondary material consulted.</p>

Between two worlds: a study of migrant writers in New Zealand

<p>This thesis begins with a consideration of what constitutes migrant writing, and points to the difficulties in arriving at an absolute definition. Some justification is given for the fact that the ensuing discussion concerns short stories alone, and some of the particular qualities of the short story which make it an appropriate form for migrant literature are examined. The first chapter also makes a brief survey of the context for migrant writing within New Zealand literature, and compares the work of several short story writers, migrant and non-migrant. The work of two New Zealand migrant short story writers is discussed closely in the chapters that follow: Amelia Batistich's stories are examined in Chapter Two, and Yvonne du Fresne's in Chapter Three. In each discussion, formal qualities are given equal attention as matters of content and theme. The final chapter attempts to draw connections between the work of these two writers and the problems of definition raised in the first chapter. Consideration is also given to the attitudes and expectations of readers of migrant fiction. The appendices to the thesis contain biographies of Amelia Batistich and Yvonne du Fresne, and transcripts of conversations with them. The conversations were recorded in 1984, and have been lightly edited. A bibliography is included which provides a selective guide to the two authors published and unpublished work, and a full account of all secondary material consulted.</p>

Dialect, Class struggle and Immigration in The Lonely Londoners, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Room At the Top

This paper addresses a little piece of a lot more extensive undertaking looking at the connections between working class and migrant writing which will frame a piece of my thesis. I will discuss the employments of lingo, class struggle and interesting differences in these books from the 1950s – John Braine’s Room At the Top (1957), Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958) and Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners (1956). I’ll begin with reference to a novel from the very period that maintains a strategic distance from broad utilization of tongue, prior to going to how these creators use vernacular and standard English alongside one another, just as set against one another, prior to getting done with an endeavor to historicize their employments of lingo. English the most prevalent language of the world has evolved with times influenced by German about 30%, Latin 30%, French 25%, Greek 5% and other languages about 10%. Surprisingly London alone has 300 other different languages spoken and they all influence add to the further development of Lingo and communication.

Orienting the Occident Italian Travel and Migrant Writing in Mexico (1890-1932)

This article addresses a comparatively neglected corpus of Italian travel and migrant writing in Mexico, ranging from Luigi Bruni’s Attraverso il Messico (1890) to Emilio Cecchi’s Messico (1932). It does so from the methodological angle of nation-making and through the seemingly counter-intuitive prism of Italian Orientalism(s). This article focuses on two key moments of both Italian and Mexican history: Post-Unification/Porfiriato and Ventennio/Post-Revolution. The discussion revolves around the problematization of the construction of an Otherized subalternity as a way for the emerging elites to discursively develop and circulate their worldview.

After the Long Wait: Post-Migrant Agency and the Politics of Return in Tahar Ben Jelloun's A Palace in the Old Village

This essay offers a contemplation of the affinity between a post-literary idiom and the question of migrant writing through a reading of Tahar Ben Jelloun's novella A Palace in the Old Village (Arcadia Books, 2011 [2009]). Taking its cue from the novella's account of its Maghrebi protagonist, the migrant worker Mohammed, in the moment of his retirement and return to Morocco, the essay opens up the question of whether the liminal ‘Franco-Maghrebi borderland’ ( Sajed 2013 ) which he traverses, as well as the home-space itself, may be perceived as either discursively generative and liberatory spaces, or as ultimately aporetic zones of living. The essay evaluates Ben Jelloun's novella as a ‘post-migrant’ one, approaching the narrative spatial projection back into the native space as a dynamics of refraction, a quest for ‘choric’ ( Rickert 2007 ) spatiality, and a restitution of agency to and from the autochthonous. The essay finally suggests that Ben Jelloun's novella stages an amplified visualisation of post-migrant discourse as it percolates through the migrant body. As Mohammed deteriorates on his native Moroccan terrain, waiting for his children who never show up, his fading body is now indelibly marked by the labour to which post-war Europe owed much of its economic resurgence: a dynamics which is described here as a ‘refracted indigeneity’.