Wanderwords: Language Migration in American Literature (New Horizons in Contemporary Writing)

How do (im)migrant writers negotiate their representation of a multilingual world for a monolingual audience? Does their English betray the presence of another language, is that other language erased, or does it appear here and there, on special occasions for special reasons? Do words and meanings wander from one language and one self to another? Do the psychic and cultural worlds of different languages split apart or merge? What is the aesthetic effect of such wandering, splitting, or merging? Usually described as "code-switches" by linguists, fragments of other languages have wandered into American literature in English from the beginning. Wanderwords asks what, in the memoirs, poems, essays, and fiction of a variety of twentieth and twenty first century writers, the function and meaning of such language migration might be. It shows what there is to be gained if we learn to read migrant writing with an eye, and an ear, for linguistic difference and it concludes that, freighted with the other-cultural meanings wrapped up in their different looks and sounds, wanderwords can perform wonders of poetic signification as well as cultural critique. Bringing together literary and cultural theory with linguistics as well as the theory and history of migration, and with psychoanalysis for its understanding of the multilingual unconscious, Wanderwords engages closely with the work of well-known and unheard-of writers such as Mary Antin and Eva Hoffman, Richard Rodriguez and Junot Díaz, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and Bharati Mukherjee, Edward Bok and Truus van Bruinessen, Susana Chávez-Silverman and Gustavo Perez-Firmat, Pietro DiDonato and Don DeLillo. In so doing, a poetics of multilingualism unfolds that stretches well beyond translation into the lingual contact zone of English-with-other-languages that is American literature, belatedly re-connecting with the world. "How do (im)migrant writers negotiate their representation of a multilingual world for a monolingual audience? Does their English betray the presence of another language, is that other language erased, or does it appear here and there, on special occasions for special reasons? Do words and meanings wander from one language and one self to another? Do the psychic and cultural worlds of different languages split apart or merge? What is the aesthetic effect of such wandering, splitting, or merging? Usually described as "code-switches" by linguists, fragments of other languages have wandered into American literature in English from the beginning. Wanderwords asks what, in the memoirs, poems, essays, and fiction of a variety of twentieth and twenty first century writers, the function and meaning of such language migration might be. It shows what there is to be gained if we learn to read migrant writing with an eye, and an ear, for linguistic difference and it concludes that, freighted with the other-cultural meanings wrapped up in their different looks and sounds, wanderwords can perform wonders of poetic signification as well as cultural critique. Bringing together literary and cultural theory with linguistics as well as the theory and history of migration, and with psychoanalysis for its understanding of the multilingual unconscious, Wanderwords engages closely with the work of well-known and unheard-of writers such as Mary Antin and Eva Hoffman, Richard Rodriguez and Junot Di;az, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and Bharati Mukherjee, Edward Bok and Truus van Bruinessen, Susana Chávez-Silverman and Gustavo Perez-Firmat, Pietro DiDonato and Don DeLillo. In so doing, a poetics of multilingualism unfolds that stretches well beyond translation into the lingual contact zone of English-with-other-languages that is American literature, belatedly re-connecting with the world"-- "Post-poststructuralism and psychoanalysis, and in an era of global migration in which English is the lingua franca but not necessarily the lingua aesthetica for migrants, readers and critics are more aware than ever that words and meanings wander, that writers cannot be taken at their word, and that the borders between literary forms (fiction, poetry, life-writing, essays) often do not hold. What happens, then, with writers who work in English but have more than one language at their disposal? Do their words wander from one language, one life, one self, one literary form to another; do the psychic and cultural worlds of their languages split apart or merge? Does their English betray the presence of another language, is that other language erased, or does it appear here and there, on special occasions with special meanings? What, in different forms of literature, is the aesthetic effect of such wandering, splitting, or merging? How do writers negotiate their representation of a multilingual world for a monolingual audience? Wanderwords brings together literary and cultural theory with areas of research that have a bearing on, but do not directly address, the problems of representation that creative writers face when the dilemma of what language to write in, and consequently what audience to write for, presents itself. The result is, of necessity, interdisciplinary, and involves socio- and psycholinguistics as well as psychoanalysis and neuroscience, history and theory of migration and ethnicity, and of course literary and cultural theory, specifically of life-writing"-- Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgements Permissions 1 Beginning Wanderwords: Language Migration in American Literature American literature, global connections The writer’s dilemma Ceci n’est pas un livre sur la traduction: the task of the multilingual critic Americanization, discontents: mass immigration and the ever-changing linguascape Reading wanderwords: theory and practice 2 How Not to Tame a Wild Tongue: Wanderwords in Theory Wanderwords and bi- or multilingualism: the migrant writer’s languages Fault lines: against ‘code-switching’ ‘Populated, overpopulated with the intentions of others’: when languages touch in text ‘Expropriating the language’: wanderwords and other heterolingual strategies Babel’s babble: resistant texts, the virtue of unintelligibility and the linguistic unconscious 3 The Promised Land, Lost in Translation: Mary Antin’s and Eva Hoffman’s Wanderwords The Promised Land and Americanization Antin on English Hoffman on language Hoffman and multiculturalism Antin, Hoffman and the linguascapes of early and late twentieth-century America 4 With and Without a Dutch Accent: the Life-Writing of Edward Bok, Dirk Nieland and Truus van Bruinessen Dutch boy made good in English-only: The Americanization of Edward Bok Yankee Dutch: the funny business of immigrant speech Yankee Dutch as a mixed language Life in a box: the bilingual archive of Truus van Bruinessen Dutch-Canadian migration in the 1950s: gender and language Writing for pleasure, without leisure: bilingualism and its discontents English, ‘the intentions of others’ and a bilingual paradox 5 Richard Rodriguez’s Spanish Psychoanalysis and the abject: Rodriguez and Chicanismo Public, private and personal: languages, voices and the essay form Feo, fuerte, y formal: the language of masculinity and desire Wanderwords: of memory and desire The question of Spanish, and Richard Rodriguez 6 Fusion Writing: Bharati Mukherjee’s Dangerous Languages The safety of English ‘To want English is to want the world’: The Tiger’s Daughter and Jasmine The violence of connection – and the violation of translation The safety of reading? 7 ‘Words Cast to Weather’: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictée Dictée: reading in circles Dictée and the question of history Mouth to mouth: the poetics of speech production Dictée’s multilingualism and the absence of Korea(n) Cha’s multilingual aesthetics – and trauma 8 Escribir y Leer, Bilingually: Spanish/English and Spanglish American Literature in the Twenty-First Century Spanishes ‘English is broken here’: in search of bi- or multilingual writing How to read bi- or multilingually ‘You (don’t) know what you’re missing’: the paradox of bi- and multilingual reading Conclusion: Really Reading Junot Díaz and Susana Chávez-Silverman Ancladas en otros lugares: Susana Chávez-Silverman’s Killer Crónicas Really reading Junot Díaz, or Oscar Wao’s wild tongue Notes Bibliography Index "Post-poststructuralism and psychoanalysis, and in an era of global migration in which English is the lingua franca but not necessarily the lingua aesthetica for migrants, readers and critics are more aware than ever that words and meanings wander, that writers cannot be taken at their word, and that the borders between literary forms (fiction, poetry, life-writing, essays) often do not hold. What happens, then, with writers who work in English but have more than one language at their disposal? Do their words wander from one language, one life, one self, one literary form to another; do the psychic and cultural worlds of their languages split apart or merge? Does their English betray the presence of another language, is that other language erased, or does it appear here and there, on special occasions with special meanings? What, in different forms of literature, is the aesthetic effect of such wandering, splitting, or merging? How do writers negotiate their representation of a multilingual world for a monolingual audience? Wanderwords brings together literary and cultural theory with areas of research that have a bearing on, but do not directly address, the problems of representation that creative writers face when the dilemma of what language to write in, and consequently what audience to write for, presents itself. The result is, of necessity, interdisciplinary, and involves socio- and psycholinguistics as well as psychoanalysis and neuroscience, history and theory of migration and ethnicity, and of course literary and cultural theory, specifically of life-writing"-- Provided by publisher Machine generated contents note: 1. Wanderwords: history and context2. How Not to Tame a Wild Tongue: wanderwords in theory3. Paradise, Lost in Translation: Mary Antin and Eva Hoffman 4. With a Dutch Accent: Edward Bok, Dirk Nieland and Truus van Bruinessen5. Vomiting Spanish: Richard Rodriguez's passages6. Fusion Writing: Bharati Mukherjee's dangerous languages7. Words Cast to Weather: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dicte;e 8. Escribir y Leer Bilingually: Spanish/English and Spanglish: American literature in the twenty-first centuryBibliographyIndex.