Remembering the Migrant Identity: A Comparative Study of Les Pieds Sales, by Edem Awumey, and Ru, by Kim Thúy

Abstract

Remembering the migrant identity: a comparative study of Les pieds sales, by Edem Awumey and Ru, by Kim ThúyAccording to Daniel Chartier, "migrant writing" unlike ethnic literature, immigration or immigrant literature can be defined thematically by hybridity and by its frequent use of autobiography (Chartier, 2002). Dictionnaire des écrivains émigrés au Québec 1800-1999, Nota Bene 2003 The genre of « migrant literature » refers to the literature from authors that are between two cultures and focus on the travel, the odyssée. The immigrant literature is a genre from immigrant writers who settle in another country whereas the ethnic literature explores subcultures. In this way, Literature can be seen as a composition of cultural fragments. It adjusts heterogeneous cultural fragments in order to produce literary emotions. As a matter of fact, the style is a pure cultural production where writers give a feeling of this cultural fragmentation.The concept of migrant literature appears in the Canadian context during the 1980s. It refers to the production of writers who, after immigrating to Canada, decided to settle in the province of Quebec -and to write within the framework of the province's literary institutions. Some representants of such migrant literature are for instance Ying Chen (born in Shanghaï in 1961), Felicia Mihaili (born in Bucarest in 1967) and Wajdi Mouawad (born in Lebanon). It is a trend that mixes autobiography fragments with migration experiences. We would like to analyze here this experience by focusing on two writers, Kim Thúy and Edem Awumey. Literature offers a new horizon for those migrant writers, as it gives the possibility to question the meaning or the meaningless world in which we live. Kim Thúy and Edem Awumey have written two novels that illustrate this literary genre, Les pieds sales (Awumey, 2009), and Ru (Thúy, 2009). The notion of world is taken from phenomenology, whereby world is a system of references, or signs that have a meaning for a group of people. The Migrant writing presents a clash of references where different meanings come from different worlds. There is a sense of waylessness pervading this writing (Fawkner, 1997, 87). Our hypothesis is that this migrant literature is a style related to the recollection of fragments of world. The fictional characters try to redefine a coherent world while travelling.There is an old word in French for re-membering, which is la remembrance, which exists in English too, remembrance. À la recherche du temps perdu by Proust is translated as Remembrance of things past. Remembrer is a synonym for se souvenir (remomari). In La Chanson de Roland, it is written: " Repairet lui vigur e remembrance " / la force et la mémoire lui reviennent -strength and memory come back to him. Pierre Nora, the French historian, defines a "lieu de mémoire" (a site of memory). A site of memory is a relation between memory and history in terms of symbolic rituals. In our societies, the logic of commemoration emphasizes the necessity to have a collective link betwe...