The Emigrant S Story

Every man has a story to tell and this was no less true of the hundreds of emigrants from the Highlands and the Hebrides who crossed the Atlantic from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century to settle in North America. This selection of Scottish Gaelic songs brings to light the revealing and often touching poems of some twenty such emigrants. Focusing on themes of emigration and exile, their subjects range from the biblical motif of liberation from tyranny (pre-destined by the Creator who provided a land of bounty across the seas), to the happier future anticipated for his daughter by a loyalist fugitive in North Carolina; from a sense of security on the part of a clergyman settled in Pictou County after the disruption in his homeland, to the disenchantment of an emigrant to Manitoba who longed to move on to North Dakota. Their tone may be lyrical, elegaic, or satirical. Songs from various parts of the new world – the Carolinas, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Ontario, and the Canadian west – are included in Gaelic with a facing English translation. A short biography of each bard prefaces the selections attributed to him or her. Detailed notes provide a guide to sources and variant texts, elucidate obscure passages, and define the social and cultural context in which the songs originated. An appendix reproduces the tunes for nine of these songs. This is a book that will inform and entertain both the specialist and the general reader.

A masterwork of W. G. Sebald, now with a gorgeous new cover by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund The four long narratives in The Emigrants appear at first to be the straightforward biographies of four Germans in exile. Sebald reconstructs the lives of a painter, a doctor, an elementary-school teacher, and Great Uncle Ambrose. Following (literally) in their footsteps, the narrator retraces routes of exile which lead from Lithuania to London, from Munich to Manchester, from the South German provinces to Switzerland, France, New York, Constantinople, and Jerusalem. Along with memories, documents, and diaries of the Holocaust, he collects photographs—the enigmatic snapshots which stud The Emigrants and bring to mind family photo albums. Sebald combines precise documentary with fictional motifs, and as he puts the question to realism, the four stories merge into one unfathomable requiem.

The third book in Moberg's classic Emigrant Novels series.

This important play from one of Poland's most prominent playwrights has had successful stagings in San Francisco, Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., and New York. It takes place on a New Year's Eve in an unnamed country in the home of two immigrants. One is a political exile, an intellectual who gets his money from a mysterious source. The other is a ditch digger who is saving money to bring over his family.

Emigrant Worlds and Transatlantic Communities gives voice to the Irish, Scottish, English, and Welsh women and men who negotiated the complex and often dangerous world of emigration between 1815 and 1845. Using "information wanted" notices that appeared in colonial newspapers as well as emigrants' own accounts, Errington illustrates that emigration was a family affair. Individuals made their decisions within a matrix of kin and community - their experiences shaped by their identities as husbands and wives, parents and children, siblings and cousins. The Atlantic crossing divided families, but it was also the means of reuniting kin and rebuilding old communities. Emigration created its own unique world - a world whose inhabitants remained well aware of the transatlantic community that provided them with a continuing sense of identity, home, and family.

From the Publisher: Book One-introduces Karl Oskar and Kristina Nilsson, their 3 young children, and 11 others who make up a resolute party of Swedes fleeing the poverty, religious persecution, and social oppression of Smaland in 1850.

What do governments do when much of their population simply gets up and walks away? In Mexico and other migrant-sending countries, mass emigration prompts governments to negotiate a new social contract with their citizens abroad. After decades of failed efforts to control outflow, the Mexican state now emphasizes voluntary ties, dual nationality, and rights over obligations. In this groundbreaking book, David Fitzgerald examines a region of Mexico whose citizens have been migrating to the United States for more than a century. He finds that emigrant citizenship does not signal the decline of the nation-state but does lead to a new form of citizenship, and that bureaucratic efforts to manage emigration and its effects are based on the membership model of the Catholic Church.