There are numerous twentieth century writers in English who are not technically native speakers of the language, and whose relation to it is ambivalent, problematic or even hostile: by a simple kinship analogy one may often speak of the 'stepmother tongue'. Whilst fully aware of the current debates in postcolonial theory, John Skinner is also conscious of its sometimes unhelpful complexities and contradictions. The focus of this study is thus firmly on the fictional practice of the writers discussed. He offers the reader an insight into the diversity and rewards of contemporary anglophone fiction, whilst analysing some eighty individual texts. A uniquely comprehensive guide, the book will be welcomed by students and teachers of postcolonial literature.

These stories by immigrant writers remind us that in a way we are all immigrants.

Borrowed Tongues is the first consistent attempt to apply the theoretical framework of translation studies in the analysis of self-representation in life writing by women in transnational, diasporic, and immigrant communities. It focuses on linguistic and philosophical dimensions of translation, showing how the dominant language serves to articulate and reinforce social, cultural, political, and gender hierarchies. Drawing on feminist, poststructuralist, and postcolonial scholarship, this study examines Canadian and American examples of traditional autobiography, autoethnography, and experimental narrative. As a prolific and contradictory site of linguistic performance and cultural production, such texts challenge dominant assumptions about identity, difference, and agency. Using the writing of authors such as Marlene NourbeSe Philip, Jamaica Kincaid, Laura Goodman Salverson, and Akemi Kikumura, and focusing on discourses through which subject positions and identities are produced, the study argues that different concepts of language and translation correspond with particular constructions of subjectivity and attitudes to otherness. A nuanced analysis of intersectional differences reveals gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, culture, and diaspora as unstable categories of representation.

This book began as a panel of University professors on the theme of Francophone Women, Coming of Age, Memoirs of Childhood and Adolescence, presented at the Northeast Modern Language Association Convention in Philadelphia, 2006. The essays center on the plight of growing up female in male-dominated Francophone cultures. Issues of culture, tradition, religion (Catholic and Muslim), parental conflicts and sibling rivalry are addressed in the works of authors from France, Quebec, Africa and the Caribbean. Authors whose memoirs and fiction are analyzed in this study span three continents––europe, North America (Quebec and the Caribbean) and Africa––but they share a common search for identity and self-definition.Dr. Beth Gale (Clark University) analyzes role-play and the use of language in the works of Annie Ernaux (France) and Assia Djebar (North Africa). Post-colonial angst and cross-cultural misunderstanding are the focus of the study of Aminata Sow Fall's Douceurs du bercail (Senegal, West Africa) by Dr. Natalie Edwards (Wagner College). Two chapters focus on Caribbean authors, from Guadeloupe: Dr. Debra Popkin (Baruch College CUNY) analyzes Giséle Pineau's special relationship with grandmother who gave her a sense of cultural identity; Dr. Leah Tolbert Lyons (Middle Tennessee State University) discusses the negative impact of the bad mothering in Myriam Warner-Vieyra's first novel, As the Sorcerer Said ... Three chapters are devoted to writers from French-speaking Canada: Dr. Myrna Delson-Karan (St. John's University) traces the portraits of children and adolescents in the works of Gabrielle Roy; Dr. Pascale Vergereau-Dewey (Kutztown University, Pennsylvania) explores the tormented childhood of Marie-Claire Blais's Pauline Archange; Dr. Edith B. Vandervoort (Defense Language Institute in Monterey) examines the search for identity and tortured father-daughter relationships in the novels of Gabrielle Gourdeau, Monique Proulx, and Marie Laberge (contemporary writers from Quebec), The seven chapters in this book explore the challenges faced by women from late 19th century through the 20th and into the 21st century as they gradually gained a voice to express their changing roles in society. Themes to be examined include sexual awakening, teenage pregnancy, and the rituals of coming of age. Conflicts occur between daughter and parents who inculcate traditional values and try to restrict their child's freedom. The importance of writing as a source of liberation and self-definition will be explored in light of the young girl's quest for freedom. Why write memoirs? Why write in French? These issues are discussed especially in cases where French is the language of the colonizer (Assia Djebar and Giséle Pineau) or where French is essential to the preservation of one's cultural identity, as it is for Quebec writers. This book will be a fine resource for college and university professors and students in programs of French, Women's Studies, and French/Francophone Literature as well as African, Caribbean, and Quebec Studies.

Discover different dimensions of the meaning of home across political, cultural, and geographic boundaries! Psychological, Political, and Cultural Meanings of Home brings a unique multidisciplinary, multicultural approach to address the interconnection of diverse experiences with the meaning of home. Filled with useful insights from respected authorities, this book shows you that the meaning of home can be incredibly varied, especially when viewed in the context of community psychology and social work. Explore the multiple facets of the meaning of home, and discover how our personal, professional, cultural, and political background contributes to how we envision or experience home. From physical dwellings such as a convent or a prison, through political frameworks that confirm or challenge the status quo, on through the related meanings of home that cross cultural and geographical boundaries, Psychological, Political, and Cultural Meanings of Home presents an added dimension of what home truly can be. You will learn that home is a volatile mix of yearning and loss, of being at home or searching for it, and that this very mix is the framework that reflects each differing belief. With Psychological, Political, and Cultural Meanings of Home you’ll explore: the changing meanings of home for Taiwanese employers of foreign domestics under globalization the opportunities and critical success factors for work and career in the home the complexities and restrictions of convent life as home how women detainees in a large urban county jail form altered definitions of home how novelists can give a powerful voice to the homeless by creating an inner image that contains all essential elements of home the cultural constructions surrounding the ambiguous lyrics of Sweet Home Chicago the role of childhood immigration in the construction of self-identity the relationship between country of origin and the ability to create a sense of home in other countries and cultures the recreation of home in diverse places by the nomad, who carries home as an essential psychological belonging within Psychological, Political, and Cultural Meanings of Home is a fascinating, eye-opening book for those in community studies, psychology, sociology, culture studies, literature, and women’s studies.

The thirty essays in English Literature and the Other Languages trace how the tangentiality of English and other modes of language affects the production of English literature, and investigate how questions of linguistic code can be made accessible to literary analysis. This collection studies multilingualism from the Reformation onwards, when Latin was an alternative to the emerging vernacular of the Anglican nation; the eighteenth-century confrontation between English and the languages of the colonies; the process whereby the standard British English of the colonizer has lost ground to independent englishes (American, Canadian, Indian, Caribbean, Nigerian, or New Zealand English), that now consider the original standard British English as the other languages the interaction between English and a range of British language varieties including Welsh, Irish, and Scots, the Lancashire and Dorset dialects, as well as working-class idiom; Chicano literature; translation and self-translation; Ezra Pound's revitalization of English in the Cantos; and the psychogrammar and comic dialogics in Joyce's Ulysses, As Norman Blake puts it in his Afterword to English Literature and the Other Languages: There has been no volume such as this which tries to take stock of the whole area and to put multilingualism in literature on the map. It is a subject which has been neglected for too long, and this volume is to be welcomed for its brave attempt to fill this lacuna.

New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea.