Writing Across Worlds: Literature and Migration

International migration has long been a dominant feature of world literature from both post-industrial and developing countries. The increasing demands of the global economic system and continued political instability in many of the world’s region have highlighted this shifting map of the world’s peoples. Yet, political concern for the larger scale economic and social impact of migration has effectively obscured the nature of the migratory nature of the migratory experience itself, the emotions and practicalities of departure, travel, arrival and the attempt to rebuild a home. Writing Across Worlds explores an extraordinary range of migration literaturesm from letters and diaries to journalistic articles, autobiographies and fiction, in order to analyse the reality of the migrant’s experience. The sheer range of writings - Irish, Friulian, Italian, Jewish and South Asian British, Gastarbeiter literature from Germany, Pied noir, French-Algerian and French West Indian writing, Carribbean novels, Slovene emigrant texts, Japanese-Canadian writing, migration in American novels, narratives from Australia, South Africa, Samoa and others - illustrate the diversity of global migratory experience and emphasise the social context of literature. The geographic and literary range of Writing Across Worlds makes this collection an invaluable analysis of migration, giving voice to the hope, pain, nostalgia and triumph of lives lived in other places.