Book contents
- Diaspora and Literary Studies
- Cambridge Critical Concepts
- Diaspora and Literary Studies
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Origins Revisited
- Part II Major Concepts
- Part III Readings in Genre, Gender, and Genealogies
- Chapter 14 Transpacific Noir
- Chapter 15 From Nothing to Something
- Chapter 16 Biological and Narrative Reproduction in the Family-Saga Novels of Maryse Condé
- Chapter 17 The Embodied Feminist Futures of Diaspora
- Chapter 18 Of Origin and Opportunity
- Chapter 19 Arabic Diasporic Literary Trajectories
- Chapter 20 Decolonizing across Borders
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 18 - Of Origin and Opportunity
Co-narratives of Refugitude in Roxane Gay’s Ayiti
from Part III - Readings in Genre, Gender, and Genealogies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 July 2023
- Diaspora and Literary Studies
- Cambridge Critical Concepts
- Diaspora and Literary Studies
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Origins Revisited
- Part II Major Concepts
- Part III Readings in Genre, Gender, and Genealogies
- Chapter 14 Transpacific Noir
- Chapter 15 From Nothing to Something
- Chapter 16 Biological and Narrative Reproduction in the Family-Saga Novels of Maryse Condé
- Chapter 17 The Embodied Feminist Futures of Diaspora
- Chapter 18 Of Origin and Opportunity
- Chapter 19 Arabic Diasporic Literary Trajectories
- Chapter 20 Decolonizing across Borders
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter positions literature as a space in which polarized discourses on refugees can exist as conarratives, both acknowledging the grand scenes/sites of tragedy that produce the refugee and the refugees’ internal contextual dimensions. Utilizing Critical Refugee Studies frameworks and refugitude as conceived by Khatharya Um, this chapter reads Roxane Gay’s Ayiti as a text that balances conarratives of abjection and agency. The chapter argues that Gay’s strategic deployment of literary devices in Ayiti demonstrate how fiction can attend to both the exteriority of spectacle and the interiority of experience, thus constructing a more complete and robust conarrative framework through which the refugee can be portrayed with dignity.
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- Diaspora and Literary Studies , pp. 314 - 328Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023