Language In Exile

"An important addition to studies of the genesis and life of Jamaican Creole as well as other New World creoles such as Gulla. Highlighting the nature of the nonstandard varieties of British English dialects to which the African slaves were exposed, this work presents a refreshingly cogent view of Jamaican Creole features." --SECOL Review "The history of Jamaican Creole comes to life through this book. Scholars will analyze its texts, follow the leads it opens up, and argue about refining its interpretations for a long time to come." --Journal of Pidgin & Creole Languages "The authors are to be congratulated on this substantial contribution to our understanding of how Jamaican Creole developed. Its value lies not only in the linguistic insights of the authors but also in the rich trove of texts that they have made accessible." --English World-Wide "Provides valuable historical and demographic data and sheds light on the origins and development of Jamaican Creole. Lalla and D'Costa offer interesting insights into Creole genesis, not only through their careful mapping of the migrations from Europe and Africa, which constructed the Jamaican society but also through extensive documentation of early texts. . . . Highly valuable to linguists, historians, anthropologists, psychologists, and anyone interested in the Caribbean or in the history of mankind." --New West Indian Guide

The history of exile literature is as old as the history of writing itself. Despite this vast and varied literary tradition, criticism of exile writing has tended to analyze these works according to a binary logic, where exile either produces creative freedom or it traps the writer in restrictive nostalgia. The Dialectics of Exile: Nation, Time, Language and Space in Hispanic Literatures offers a theory of exile writing that accounts for the persistence of these dual impulses and for the ways that they often co-exist within the same literary works. Focusing on writers working in the latter part of the twentieth century who were exiled during a historical moment of increasing globalization, transnational economics, and the theoretical shifts of postmodernism, Sophia A. McClennen proposes that exile literature is best understood as a series of dialectic tensions about cultural identity. Through comparative analysis of Juan Goytisolo (Spain), Ariel Dorfman (Chile) and Cristina Peri Rossi (Uruguay), this book explores how these writers represent exile identity. Each chapter addresses dilemmas central to debates over cultural identity such as nationalism versus globalization, time as historical or cyclical, language as representationally accurate or disconnected from reality, and social space as utopic or dystopic. McClennen demonstrates how the complex writing of these three authors functions as an alternative discourse of cultural identity that not only challenges official versions imposed by authoritarian regimes, but also tests the limits of much cultural criticism.

'Exile' means a prolonged, usually enforced absence from one's home or country. There is no paradigm for an exilic existence and no prescription of how to heal the loss of one's home and one's identity. Exiles move in space, migrating from one place to another, but they are trapped in time. They long for what they have lost and fear what is yet to come. Like the Roman god Janus, they constantly look both ways, often lacking language that would help them to reconnect with the world. This volume examines the process of the exile's self-translation by rediscovering a way of expression for the ensnared experience. It requires a new language so that the self may take a new shape. By discussing the unavoidable losses wrought upon immigrants, exiles and refugees by the mere fact of being displaced, the authors hope to foster a better understanding of these problems and help to rebuild shattered identities and ruined lives. Contents: Magda Stroinska/Vittorina Cecchetto: Introduction - Mary Besemeres: Cultural translation and the translingual self in the memoirs of Edward Said and Andre Aciman - Claire Burke: Exile from the inner self or from society? A dilemma in the works of Max Frisch - Ruth Burke: Persephone as paradigm: Fictional exiles in postcolonial francophone literature - Chantal Abouchar: Albert Memmi's Agar: The paradox of the couple - Andrea Rinke: German films in a German exile - Magda Stroinska: The role of language in the re-construction of identity in exile - Natalia E. Rulyova: Joseph Brodsky: Exile, language and metamorphosis - Annabel Cox: Achy Obeja's « Sugarcane and Cuban-American bilingual literature: Language choices and cultural identities - Branka Popovic: Theproblem of identity and language in refugees from the (former) Yugoslavia - Vittorina Cecchetto: From immigrant to exile: Does language contribute to this process? - Anthony Purdy: Collage and chronotope in Regine Robin's La Quebecoite - Iris Bruce: Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles: Sprechen, schreiben, schweigen - Catherine Reuben: Exile, identity and memory: the boundaries of perception - Maroussia Hajdukowski-Ahmed: At the borders of language, language without borders: Non-verbal forms of communication of women survivors of torture.

In December 2001, the centennial of the first Nobel Prize was celebrated in Stockholm. To mark the occasion, the Swedish Academy organized a symposium on the theme of OC Witness LiteratureOCO. Talks were given by speakers from Asia, Africa and Europe, including three Nobel laureates in literature: Nadine Gordimer, Kenzaburo Oe and Gao Xingjian.The main objective of the symposium was to examine the concept of witness literature and its relevance to contemporary literature. This concept is relatively new and has not yet been defined clearly by literary criticism and scholarship. The discussion primarily alternated between two aspects of the topic: the particular claim to truth that witness literature puts forward, and the process that leads from catastrophe to creativity and that turns the victim into a writing witness with the power to suspend forgetfulness and denial.This volume, edited by Horace Engdahl, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, brings together all the talks given at the symposium."

Literature in Exile of East and Central Europe is a collection of articles discussing authors whose homelands range from the former Soviet Union to the former Yugoslavia. For the purposes of this book, East and Central Europe comprise Russia, Poland, Germany, Czech Republic, Romania, and former Yugoslavia. These writers were exiled as a result of unbearable political climates - be it nations of the Communist block, including former Yugoslavia torn by its civil wars, or in the case of Poland, its partitioning by neighboring powers in the nineteenth century. No other book has collected such a variety of discussions from this geopolitical region, featuring authors who chose exile over the extinguishment of their individuality. Organized by theme and geography, this book will be of interest to a wide group of readers: from the topic of exile to research in Slavic (Czech, Polish, Russian, and post-Yugoslav), Romanian, German, and comparative literature. Literature in Exile of East and Central Europe is a valuable supplement to courses in Eastern and Central European history, as well as a primary text for courses in East and Central European literature.

This book examines the relation between geographic and linguistic border crossings in twentieth-century world literature. Exploring the dynamic from a comparative and translingual perspective, this volume reveals differing literary strategies for responding to exile and argues for the crucial role of exile in understanding writing of the period.

“A pioneering study” of how two languages have coexisted in the Jewish state, with “a wealth of information” on Yiddish newspapers, theater, and more (AJS Review). Yiddish in Israel: A History challenges the commonly held view that Yiddish was suppressed or even banned by Israeli authorities for ideological reasons, offering instead a radical new interpretation of the interaction between Yiddish and Israeli Hebrew cultures. Rachel Rojanski tells the compelling unknown story of how Yiddish, the most widely used Jewish language in the pre-Holocaust world, fared in Zionist Israel, the land of Hebrew. Following Yiddish in Israel from the proclamation of the State until today, Rojanski reveals that although Israeli leadership made promoting Hebrew a high priority, it did not have a definite policy on Yiddish. The language’s varying fortune through the years was shaped by social and political developments, as well as the cultural atmosphere in Israel. Public perception of the language and its culture, the rise of identity politics, and political and financial interests all played a part. Using a wide range of archival sources, newspapers, and Yiddish literature, Rojanski follows the Israeli Yiddish scene through the history of the Yiddish press, Yiddish theater, early Israeli Yiddish literature, and high Yiddish culture. With compassion, she explores the tensions during Israel’s early years between Yiddish writers and activists and Israel’s leaders, most of whom were themselves Eastern European Jews balancing their love of Yiddish with their desire to promote Hebrew. Finally Rojanski follows Yiddish into the twenty-first century, telling the story of the revived interest in Yiddish among Israeli-born children of Holocaust survivors as they return to the language of their parents.

One of the most intriguing and engaging voices in contemporary Christianity is that of the Irish poet, Pádraig Ó Tuama and this is his first, long-awaited poetry collection. Hailing from the Ikon community in Belfast and working closely with its founder, the bestselling writer Pete Rollins, Pádraig’s poetry interweaves parable, poetry, art, activism and philosophy into an original and striking expression of faith. Pádraig’s poems are accessible, memorable profound and challenging. They emerge powerfully from a context of struggle and conflict and yet are filled with hope.