Papers presented at the Second World Conference of World Association for Studies in Literatures in English, held at Nagpur in January 2004.

The eighteen stories collected in Immigrant Voices highlight the complex relationships of immigrants in the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century with their families, friends, new surroundings, and home countries. The authors themselves have made many of the same kinds of transitions as the characters they portray, and they offer fresh perspectives on the immigrant experience. Coedited by award-winning author Achy Obejas and cultural studies scholar Megan Bayles, this anthology addresses the perennial questions about society and the individual that the authors of the Great Books have pondered for centuries. Letting Go to America, M. Evelina Galang. Absence, Daniel Alarcón. Mother the Big, Porochista Khakpour. The Bees, Part 1, Aleksandar Hemon. Grandmother's Garden, Meena Alexander. Otravida, Otravez, Junot Díaz. Wal-Mart Has Plantains, Sefi Atta. Fischer vs. Spassky, Lara Vapnyar. The Stations of the Sun, Reese Okyong Kwon. Echo, Laila Lalami. No Subject, Carolina De Robertis. The Science of Flight, Yiyun Li. Hot-Air Balloons, Edwidge Danticat. Home Safe, Emma Ruby-Sachs. SJU ATL DTW (San Juan Atlanta Detroit), Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes. Diógenes, Pablo Helguera. Bamboo, Eduardo Halfon. Encrucijada, Roberto G. Fernández.

[Ahmad's] "introduction is fiery and charismatic... This book encompasses the diversity of experience, with beautiful variations and stories that bicker back and forth." --Parul Sehgal, The New York Times The first global anthology of migration literature featuring works by Mohsin Hamid, Zadie Smith, Marjane Satrapi, Salman Rushdie, and Warsan Shire, with a foreword by Edwidge Danticat, author of Everything Inside A Penguin Classic Every year, three to four million people move to a new country. From war refugees to corporate expats, migrants constantly reshape their places of origin and arrival. This selection of works collected together for the first time brings together the most compelling literary depictions of migration. Organized in four parts (Departures, Arrivals, Generations, and Returns), The Penguin Book of Migration Literature conveys the intricacy of worldwide migration patterns, the diversity of immigrant experiences, and the commonalities among many of those diverse experiences. Ranging widely across the eighteenth through twenty-first centuries, across every continent of the earth, and across multiple literary genres, the anthology gives readers an understanding of our rapidly changing world, through the eyes of those at the center of that change. With thirty carefully selected poems, short stories, and excerpts spanning three hundred years and twenty-five countries, the collection brings together luminaries, emerging writers, and others who have earned a wide following in their home countries but have been less recognized in the Anglophone world. Editor of the volume Dohra Ahmad provides a contextual introduction, notes, and suggestions for further exploration.

Novelist Ha Jin raises questions about language, migration, and the place of literature in a rapidly globalizing world. Consisting of three interconnected essays, The Writer as Migrant sets Ha Jin’s own work and life alongside those of other literary exiles, creating a conversation across cultures and between eras. He employs the cases of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Chinese novelist Lin Yutang to illustrate the obligation a writer feels to the land of their birth, while Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov—who, like Ha Jin, adopted English for their writing—are enlisted to explore a migrant author’s conscious choice of a literary language. A final essay draws on V. S. Naipaul and Milan Kundera to consider the ways in which our era of perpetual change forces a migrant writer to reconceptualize the very idea of home. Throughout, Jin brings other celebrated writers into the conversation as well, including W. G. Sebald, C. P. Cavafy, and Salman Rushdie—refracting and refining the very idea of a literature of migration. Simultaneously a reflection on a crucial theme and a fascinating glimpse at the writers who compose Ha Jin’s mental library, The Writer as Migrant is a work of passionately engaged criticism, one rooted in departures but feeling like a new arrival.

A collection of personal narratives of migrants crossing the US-Mexico border, Voices of the Border brings us closer to this community of people and their strength, love, and courage in the face of hardship and injustice. Chapter introductions provide readers with a broader understanding of their experiences and the consequences of public policy.

"This flash fiction anthology examines the experience of being a transplant in a foreign land, giving a glimpse into the immense loss of oneself in juxtaposition to the strange beauty of rediscovery. The collection looks critically at what it means to forsake tongues, traditions, and comforts in the hope of starting a new life in another world. By exploring a diverse map of migrant experiences, these stories push readers to expand their understanding of the world as it exists beyond their own front doors. This collection contains forty affecting works written by several multigenerational immigrant authors from countries around the world, including Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, China, Cuba, England, Finland, Germany, Greece, India, Israel, Lebanon, Mexico, Moldavia, Morocco, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Sicily, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United States, and Vietnam. Regardless of their origin, all share the experience of putting down roots in new soil. Each story examines how adapting to new lives and lands impacts the author's understanding of themselves and their community. At a thousand words or fewer, every vignette redefines resilience and the meaning of home; the intensity of each is captivating from the very first line"--

"Post-World War II mass migration to Great Britain altered its demographic composition more markedly than in any other period in its history, resulting in a modern multicultural nation state shaped by the ethnic diversity of its citizenry. Populations from African, Caribbean, and South Asian locations arriving in Britain post-war brought diasporic sensibilities and literary heritages that have profoundly transformed British national culture, leading to a more complex and inclusive sense of its past. The Companion to British Black and Asian Literature (1945-2010) examines the creative impact of this rich infusion upon English literature against the backdrop of the seismic social and economic changes triggered by colonialism and migration, multiculturalism, and contemporary globalization"--