Response 22: "The Location of Literature"

One that statements that really caught my eye declared that “the ways of thinking about the varieties and complexities s of literary participation correspond to new ways of thinking about whose lies and which objects are transformed by migration”  (922). It also got me thinking about not just migration, but also about perspective, the perspective of the migrant versus the perspective of the new society/place that person was migrating to. In history and in culture, there have been always different perspectives on history, literature, and society. For example, there is a common phrase that history is written by the winners (the dominant powers) and when they choose to retell the story, they may omit parts of the story that may reflect to be unflattering to them. It also got be thinking about colonial and postcolonial literature and how they can also be classified as migrant literature because they include either the perspective/response to a new culture (for example when Western countries moved eastwards). In addition, postcolonial literature isn’t so much about “characters who believe themselves to be very much at home” but rather a response to a very unexpected conundrum of not feeling at home in the place that is their home.

The statement that “the political and social processes of immigration shape the whole literary system, the relationships among all of the works in a literary culture, and not simply the part of that system that involves books generated by immigrant populations” is quite true (922). It also got me thinking about, for instance, the history of the United States and how it encompasses the stories of differing migrants since its discovery and how it has affected them and diversified American society. In addition we share this global fascination of tracing our roots and our ancestry and learning more about our identity through people of the past (which also includes their migration stories).