Migration in Literature

What can literature tell us about migration? In her paper of the same title, Amy Burge (2020) highlights the role of literary essays and books on migration in questioning dominant narratives, providing alternative historical perspectives, and serving as a therapeutic practice. Above all, literature sheds light into the depths of the personal dimension of migration, or what the Palestinian-American émigré intellectual Edward W. Said called “scrupulous subjectivity.”  

Here are some useful anthologies and lists to start with:

• COMPAS recommendations – The best books on migration we read this year (2022): recommendations by the interdisciplinary team at Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford.

• The Penguin Book of Migration Literature (2019): an anthology that features works by migrant writers from across time, space, and genre, compiled by professor Dohra Ahmad at St. Johns’s University.

• 'Love, loss and longing': the best books on migration, chosen by writers (2020): the Guardian

• The list of 8 International Novels About Migration and Xenophobia (2019): compiled by writer Felicity Castagna

• On Being Foreign: Culture Shock in Short Fiction, An International Anthology (1986): A selection of essays on cross-cultural adjustment by authors, such as Albert Camus, Jorge Luis Borges, Joseph Conrad, Hermann Hesse, and Katherine Mansfield. We thank MBS Member Torsten Kühlmann for this recommendation!

• Popular Immigrant Fiction Books on Goodreads website

• khōréō online magazine of speculative fiction and migration