The New Nomads

Gardens, Transitions and Identity Reconstruction among Older Chinese Immigrants to New Zealand

“…They can feel fundamentally out of place, alone and socially isolated. Several participants shared similar experiences, using metaphors such as 'feeling imprisoned by language barriers', 'social blindness, muteness and deafness' to describe the biographical disruption associated with moving to a country dominated by a language different to one's own (Hoffman, 2000). In order to regain connectivity with their environment, many participants had enrolled in English language classes and, as we will show, created their personal space in the garden.…”

Hemingway: An Untragic Exile and Literary Genius

“…1, No. 1, September 2015 exile became "sexy, glamorous, interesting" within postmodern thought as it involves, dislocation, uncertainty, displacement, and the fragmented identity, qualities people have come to value [8]. Exile, by the end of the nineteenth century, had even become "an attitude, a literary and intellectual way of observing the world" [9].…”

The “Gift”: Synesthesia in Translingual Texts

“…Some unconsciously shy away from political trauma, like the National Book Award laureate Jerzy Kosinski, who, as a child, got separated from his family in Nazi occupied Poland and eventually suppressed Polish and Russian, the languages of his childhood (Teicholz, 1993); some others, like Nancy Huston, who left Anglophone Canada to become an acclaimed French writer, had to escape personal/family circumstances. These writers evoke 'clean' words of the second language, devoid of anxieties, memories, and self-loathing-the freedom that Steven Kellman (2000) calls "emancipatory detachment" (p. 28) and Eva Hoffman (1999) terms "fertile detachment" (p. 50), which spurs their creativity and allows them to 'play' with meaning and linguistic form using to their advantage their position as "outsiders"-of history, language, culture, and of lingua-cultural scripts. The interplay of inside-outside, of detachment and engagement, and of exilic drama is a great advantage, what Hoffman calls "the bonus" (p. 50) of translingual writing, epitomizing the general notion of literary creativity deriving from the sense of estrangement-from being a generic "émigré de l'intérieur.…”