Translating Pain
Immigrant Suffering in Literature and Culture
Published on 21. February 2009
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-0-8020-9919-8 (ISBN)
Description
In the post-Cold War, post-9/11 era, the immigrant experience has changed dramatically. Despite the recent successes of immigrant and world literatures, there has been little scholarship on how the hardships of immigration are conveyed in immigrant narratives. Translating Pain fills this gap by examining literature from Muslim North Africa, the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe to reveal the representation of immigrant suffering in fiction. Applying immigrant psychology to literary analysis, Madelaine Hron examines the ways in which different forms of physical and psychological pain are expressed in a wide variety of texts. She juxtaposes post-colonial and post-communist concerns about immigration, and contrasts Muslim world views with those of Caribbean creolite and post-Cold War ethics. Demonstrating how pain is translated into literature, she explores the ways in which it also shapes narrative, culture, history, and politics. A compelling and accessible study, Translating Pain is a groundbreaking work of literary and postcolonial studies.
Reviews / Votes
'In this study of global immigrant writing, Madelaine Hron demonstrates remarkable critical and theoretical dexterity ... Hron has made an important entry into the fields of national and transnational literatures.' -- Rebecca Babcock, The Dalhousie Review 'In today's cultural globalization, the translation of emigre experience in literature through the rhetoric of pain is a topic that needs to be revisited. Madelaine Hron's thought-provoking and insightful pioneering work is an important step in this direction ... Her wide-ranging scholarship and original analysis in Translating Pain will certainly assist the next student of this important subject.' -- Mila Saskova-Pierce, KOSMAS: Czechoslovak and Central European Journal 'Translating Pain is ground breaking in its breadth of study and choice of texts? This book will be useful to scholars of francophone and Czech literature as well as to those interested in the latest developments in trauma studies, affect theory, and migrant literature.' -- Julie-Francoise Kruidenier, Slavic & East European Journal: vol 54:04:2010More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Toronto
Canada
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 160 mm
Thickness: 28 mm
Weight
600 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8020-9919-8 (9780802099198)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Madelaine Hron is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Film at Wilfrid Laurier University.
Content
Acknowledgments Introduction PART ONE: Translating Immigrant Suffering * Perversely Through Pain: Immigrants & Immigrant Suffering * Suffering Matters: The Translation & Politics of Pain PART TWO: Embodying Pain: Maghrebi Immigrant Texts * Mal Partout: Body Rhetoric in Maghrebi Immigrant Fiction * In The Maim of the Father: Disability & Bodies of Labor * Putes Ni Soumises: Engendering Doubly-Oppressed Bodies * Pathologically Sick?: Metaphors of Disease in Beur Texts PART THREE: Affective Cultural Translation: Haitian Vodou * Zombification: Hybrid Myth-Uses of Vodou from the West to Haiti * Zombi-Fictions: Vodou Myth-Representations in Haitian Emigrant Fiction PART FOUR: Silencing Suffering: The Czech Emigre Experience * Painless?: The Exile & Return of the Czech Emigre * The Suffering of Return: Painful Detours in Czech Postcommunist Fiction Conclusion Endnotes Work Cited