Hybridism, on Migrant Literature
My course will be about migrant literature in the post-colonial period. The focus will be on authors who express themselves in a non-native language, writers such as Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov, Eva Hoffman, Ha Jin, Aleksandar Hemon. I also use my own case, since I am a writer who came from the East, experienced cultural uprooting and immigration, and who, finally, has adopted a second language, English, in which to write.
Through this course we will explore questions such as: After Exile and Migration, how does a writer continue to survive with intellectual and emotional integrity? Is it artistically viable for the writer to retain her/his original cultural identity, working in their native language in a foreign land? Or can the writer construct a language hybrid, as a new positive force, creating thereby a literary country of their own? The fact that English is currently the lingua franca, and countries such as the USA, Britain, Australia and Canada are still major immigration destinations, how can non-native English speakers and writers claim English as their own literary vehicle? Do colonial histories provide the soil for language experimentations?
During my teaching we will study several major contemporary bilingual authors and find out the characteristic nature of their expression, and we will explore the double consciousness and hybridism in these writers’ works.
The seminar will be conducted in English.
Xiaolu Guo is a bilingual author and filmmaker. Born 1973 in the south of China, Guo now lives in England. She studied at the Beijing Film Academy and at the National Film and TV School in London. Her film, She, a Chinese was awarded the Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival in 2009. Already in 2005, she published her first from a total of seven novels Village of Stone. Her books have been translated into 27 languages.
