Migrant Aesthetics: Contemporary Fiction, Global Migration, and the Limits of Empathy

Glenda R. Carpio's Migrant Aesthetics challenges traditional immigrant literature by exposing historical legacies and political injustices that produce forced migration through artistic innovation. It emphasizes the limits of empathy and insists that readers recognize their own roles in the realities of migration, which is driven by global inequalities.

Format: Hardback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 31 October 2023
Publisher: Columbia University Press

Immigrant literature often focuses on the challenges immigrants face in adapting to their new homes. However, these stories can sometimes overlook the political factors that drive mass migration and the individual successes that often go unnoticed. Glenda R. Carpio proposes a new paradigm for migrant fiction, which she explores in her book Migrant Aesthetics. Carpio argues that contemporary authors such as Teju Cole, Dinaw Mengestu, Aleksandar Hemon, Valeria Luiselli, Julie Otsuka, and Junot Díaz use artistic innovation to expose the historical legacies and political injustices that lead to forced migration. They challenge the traditional immigrant literature narrative, which often relies on the acculturation plot and the use of migrant narrators as cultural guides. Instead, they emphasize the limits of empathy and encourage readers to recognize their own roles in the realities of migration, which are driven by global inequalities. Carpio traces how these authors create literary echoes of the past, showing how the history of (neo)colonialism connects different immigrant experiences and can lay the foundation for cross-ethnic migrant solidarity. Migrant Aesthetics reveals how migration shapes and is shaped by language and narrative, making it a vital testimony to past and present colonial, imperial, and structural displacement and violence.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780231207560