The Violence of Translingual Identity in Kazim Ali'sBright Felon
Autobiography and Citiesand Julia Alvarez'sThe Other Side / El otro lado
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4572060 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lara Vetter (University of North Carolina at Charlotte, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 110-131 |
| Publication date | 2019-02-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | MELUS Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0163-755X • E-ISSN: 1946-3170 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/melus/mly061 |
| OpenAlex | W2914693926 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 17 |
US translingual writers Kazim Ali and Julia Alvarez make the unusual choice of verse to write their autobiographical texts, Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities (2009) and The Other Side/El otro lado (1995), respectively. The choice of verse forms by these two writers is very much central to how each conceives of translingual identity and its relationship to material and symbolic violence. Autobiographical verse exposes what conventional narrative tends to efface: the discursivity of subjectivity and the violence of translingual selfhood. But the inherent fragmentary quality of poetry, its jagged line and stanza breaks, its resistance to linear narrative or closure, its abrupt caesuras, its lyrical incursions and excursions can make it a particularly effective avenue to express US translingual stories of identity—of linguistic bifurcation, of the permanence of exile, of the threat of violence on the edges of their experiences.
Aesthetics · Art · Biography · Epistemology · Identity (music) · Literature · Narrative · Poetry · Stanza · Subjectivity · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · German Colonialism and Identity Studies · Middle East Politics and Society · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.25 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2022 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |