But each of these writers is in sync with Zadie Smith, who in вЂњWhite TeethвЂќ wrote, вЂњIt makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears - dissolution, disappearance.вЂќ Shire writes after landing in a grim deportation center, вЂњI spent days and nights in the stomach of the truck, I did not come out the same.вЂќ She writes: вЂњI am unwelcome and my beauty is not beauty here.вЂќДЄ post shared by WARSAN SHIRE easy to blur the line between refugee and immigration literature, and IвЂ™ve already done so. If a decent meal and a drink were on offer in this place, even if followed by certain death, вЂњthe line of men waiting to die would have stretched for miles.вЂќ Mengestu particularly underscores his hunger. In MengestuвЂ™s story вЂњAn Honest Exit,вЂќ an Ethiopian man dreaming of escape to Europe is caught in between, in a port town where he sleeps rough and is beaten by cops. вЂњDo you want to know how people go to the bathroom on the boat?вЂќ her narrator asks. She captures not just the heat but the humiliation. In вЂњChildren of the Sea,вЂќ one of the stories in DanticatвЂ™s collection вЂњKrik? Krak!вЂќ (1995), Haitians flee political violence in a tiny, leaking boat.

Shire is the real thing - fresh, cutting, indisputably alive. I discovered ShireвЂ™s work in Dohra AhmadвЂ™s excellent anthology, вЂњThe Penguin Book of Migration LiteratureвЂќ (2019).

I was familiar with DanticatвЂ™s and MengestuвЂ™s fiction. One young woman says: вЂњForty years ago our parents survived Pol Pot, and now, what the holy (expletive) are we even doing? Obsessing over wedding favors? Wasting hundreds of dollars on getting our hair done?вЂќДЄ post shared by Viet Thanh Nguyen grain of the life of the uprooted, of those forced to flee for their lives, has been captured especially well by, to name but three writers, Haitian American Edwidge Danticat, Ethiopian American Dinaw Mengestu and British writer and poet Warsan Shire, who was born to Somali parents in Kenya. Immigrant parents and native-born children stared at each other as if through bulletproof glass. So wrote about Cambodian American families in CaliforniaвЂ™s Central Valley. One reason the stories in Anthony Veasna SoвЂ™s posthumously published collection, вЂњAfterpartiesвЂќ (2021), landed with such force is that they underscored how exile and trauma permanently divide generations. The unrelentingly grim news is a reminder of how much of literature is fueled by crises of migration and its aftermaths, and how writers have tried to capture the texture of upended lives.

But Joyce Carol Oates was surely correct when she wrote, вЂњReading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into anotherвЂ™s skin, anotherвЂ™s voice, anotherвЂ™s soul.вЂќ In вЂњCrime and Punishment,вЂќ a desperate man asks, вЂњDo you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn?вЂќ I am not here to suggest that reading necessarily makes us better, more moral. Ovid wrote the letters in his вЂњTristiaвЂќ (вЂњSorrowsвЂќ) after his banishment from Rome. Since the beginning, writers have sought to capture the experience of the outsider, the exile, the parched traveler, the wanderer, the migrant. рџ—ћпёЏSubscribe Now: Get Express Premium to access the best Election reporting and analysis рџ—ћпёЏ

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