Diaspora Literature

By Mohammed Forouzani (Martin Foroz)

Part 1 : A Twin IDentity

Are you living in a country different from your ancestral homeland?

Have you ever heard about or met people who identify with a homeland but live outside of it?

Ever read an account of the forced displacement of certain people from their indigenous territories?

Ever read a writer who voiced out their thoughts in a language different from their mother tongue? 

Well, all that tells the story of the Diaspora, but where does this term come from?

Diaspora in History

A quick look at the history of the term shows the origin in the Jewish dispersion through the Babylonian Exile in 586 BCE when the Babylonians conquered the land of Juda, and the Jews were enslaved. Although Cyrus the Great, the Persian conqueror of Babylonia, allowed the Jews to return home, part of the Jewish community decided to stay. Later on, toward the 1^st century CE, they settled in Alexandria, and by the 70^th CE, they resided in different parts of the world (Britannica). The Jewish dispersion is more associated with religious causes while Diaspora in the following centuries was identified with other reasons such as economic, political, and the like. Between the two world wars in the 20^th century, “diaspora” was used synonymously with mass ‘migration’ from Eastern Europe to Western Europe or the US (Král). The term diaspora now applies to a far larger population who move from their homelands to live in other countries for different reasons. Articles on the evolution and timeline of Diaspora and a long A-Z list of diaspora nations are available from online sources for interested readers. This introductory essay focuses on diaspora literature in general with a few examples from diaspora poets and novelists.

Diaspora and cultural ties

Courtesy of Google Pictures

What may distinguish the diaspora from other migrant categories is the strong ties with their ancestral culture, language, and traditions.  Add to this their longing for returning home. To Orwell, “… leaving your native land … means transferring your roots into shallower soil (qtd. in Hawley 3). Well said! He was thinking of Henry Miller in France, of course, but his view also holds regarding the Diaspora who left their homeland to choose bad over worse. Love of land not only does not diminish but may even intensify over time. On self-exile or otherwise, the Diaspora live with a dream of Home in their country of residence. This strong bond with the homeland is reflected chiefly in cultural products such as literature, movies, and other genres of art.  

I second Král’s view of identity in that it has ceased to be an absolute, essentialist perspective in the 21^st century. Processes such as migration and globalization have caused dual identities, making it difficult to classify a person under one nationality. Joseph Conrad, a non-English writer who wrote masterpieces in English, is a case in point: he was born to Polish parents in Ukraine and moved to France at the age of 16 and then to England and became a British citizen when he was 29. He is considered Polish-British, but his writings show his cultural ties to Poland and Ukraine and western values, for that matter.

An apparently counter-example to the cultural ties of the diaspora is Charles Bukowski, a German-American writer whose writings were culturally, socially, and economically influenced by his home city Los Angeles. Little attachment to his German background may be observed except for his accent. The recurring themes in his works are taken from the American- and more specifically LA- lifestyle. However, he is believed NOT to have ever fitted the image of an American writer. Also, the expressionistic sense in his works that is quite German in nature might evince Bukowski’s ties to his origin though the themes in his works do not reflect this. 

I would argue that there is always some degree of cultural ties—weak or strong depends on one’s attachments. The stronger the ties, the more aptly the individual could be associated with the Diaspora.

Diaspora Literature: Quest for a new/twin IDentity

Courtesy of Google Pictures

Diaspora Literature encompasses a wide range of works from the Indian diaspora, the largest in the world, to other Asian diasporas (e.g., Arab, Chinese, Nepalese, Persian), African, and European nations. Most of the diaspora literature centers around the enforced migration despite the cultural ties and the longing for the homeland. Writing in English or the language of the target country for the diaspora would mean a quest for a new IDentity that eventually gets entwined with the writer’s origin. Having said that, some diaspora literature such as Afrosporic Literature is identified not with a single language- hence English- but with the plurality of languages and the African heritages (Brancato).

Along with the writer’s dual IDentity gained over time, the diaspora literature is basically characterized by the displacement of Self. Indra Sinha and his symbolic novel The Animal’s People, Salman Rushdi who describes his identity as “made up of bits and fragments from here and there” and his masterpiece Midnight’s Children, Chinua Achebe and his powerful depiction of displaced Self in Things Fall Apart, all portray the quest for Self in one way or another. Arab Diaspora presents other cases in point:

In a search for identity, Ibtisam Barakat delicately describes the sense of belonging, self, and love through the opening lines in Tasting the Sky:

… May we find the language

that takes us

to the only home there is—

one another’s hearts. (…)

Barakat’s childhood experience in the Six-Day War in Ramallah portrays heartbreaking sense and scenes of abandonment of an Arab child and quest for home on the map of world literature.

Even in self-decided migrations, a bitter sense of displacement is aptly narrated in Laila Lalami’s Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits. She has explored the lives of four Morrocans before and after their dangerous path to migrate to Spain and describes immigrants’ social and economic vulnerability. In a similar disheartening account of “transferring … roots into a shallower soil,” Laila Halaby tells the story of a Jordanian couple who leave the deserts of their native land for Arizona, where they are tragically disillusioned with the American Dream and yearn for their homeland.

Whatever the cause for which ethnic groups leave their homeland, the fruit it bears is Displacement and a new Self, a twin Identity.

Works Cited

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopedia. “Diaspora.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 28 May. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Diaspora-Judaism. Accessed 16 July 2021.

Brancato, Sabrina. “Afro-European Literature(s): A New Discursive Category?”  Research in African Literatures, vol. 39, no. 3, 2008, pp. 1–13.  JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20109619. Accessed 25 July 2021.

“Diaspora”. In obo in Literary and Critical Theory. 16 Jul. 2021. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780190221911/obo-9780190221911-0092

Hawley, John C. “Theorizing the Diaspora.” Global Fissures: Postcolonial Fusions, edited by C. Joseph and J. Wilson, Rodopi, Amsterdam/New York, 2006, pp. 3-16.