Stories in the stepmother tongue / edited by Josip Novakovich & Robert Shapard.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Shapard, Robert, 1942-

Novakovich, Josip, 1956-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Short stories, American--Minority authors.

Short stories, American.

Emigration and immigration--Fiction.

Emigration and immigration.

United States.

American fiction--20th century.

American fiction.

Minorities--Fiction.

Minorities.

Immigrants--Fiction.

Immigrants.

United States--Emigration and immigration--Fiction.

United States--Social life and customs--Fiction.

Manners and customs.

Genre:

Fiction.

Short stories, American.

Physical Description:

254 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Buffalo, N.Y. : White Pine Press, [2000]

Summary:

These stories were written in English by writers who emigrated to the United States. Why do these writers choose to express themselves in a language other than their native tongue? There are as many reasons as there are writers. When writing is a major part of life, coming to a new country and learning to write in its language is, for many writers, necessary to feeling at home in the world in which they now live. Other writers, such as Thomas Palakeel of India, write in English to keep their own culture alive in the midst of Westernization: "Freedom was not free. We paid and paid as the big world came crashing into our small world like a Burlington Northern freight train...I feared that in the flood of cultural debris, we would be made invisible." Bharati Mukherjee states that "I, being fresh off the jet, want to get away from a lot of the mythologies that were so genderist, that were created to reinforce patriarchy or the class system," while Mikhail Iossel, states that "...the last thing a nostalgia-besotted, half-mad-with-grief emigre writer needs is dealing with his life, the sum total of his losses to date, in a language which, instead of distancing him from his past and bringing this damned past to some kind of proverbial closure, keeps further stirring it up, rehashing it... If you're trying to get over an unfaithful lover, it makes no sense to keep her photo in your wallet!" But whatever the reason, these writers, by adding their voices to the great song of ourselves that is our literary heritage, enrich us all.

Contents:

Not for Sale / Judith Ortiz Cofer 21

Grandma's Tales / Andrew Lam 28

Happiness / Bharati Mukherjee 35

Born Again / Andrei Codrescu 46

The Book of the Dead / Edwidge Danticat 65

Saboteur / Ha Jim 78

Homage / Stella Pope Duarte 91

Every Hunter Wants to Know / Mikhail Iossel 101

Fatemeh / Nahid Rachlin 121

Chocolate War / Thomas Palakeel 132

The Documentarian / Jaime Manrique 147

The Winter Hibiscus / Minfong Ho 161

This World / Samrat Upadhyay 179

Sisters / Shirley Geok-lin Lim 201

Joe / Julia Alvarez 218

from Mother Tongues and Other Untravellings / Kyoko Uchida 234

Distance / Simon Ortiz 238.

ISBN:

1893996042

OCLC:

43945309