The Literature of Immigration

Becky Chung
FLYP
December 18, 2008

There are about 186,579,300 immigrants in the world, according to the World Population Polices 2005 United Nations Report. Politics labels them differently: as aliens, foreigners, criminals, strangers, intruders, illegal, legal. The face of the individual dissolves into a stereotype—a faceless item to be manipulated through the agenda of the host country.

“We may have all these statistics, all this information of arrival, departure, economic status, but that doesn’t tell you anything about the person’s life, the person’s soul, the person’s sorrow, the person’s joy,” says Marjorie Agosin, a Chilean-American author and poet.

To solve that, three writers from different continents met recently in a chandelier-lit room at the Americas Society in New York City...

To read the complete article, click here. View videos below.

Marjorie Agosin speaks on the emotional importance of literature written by immigrants.



Watch Neil Bissondath on telling the immigrant story.



Watch Amara Lakhous speaking about the problems and opportunities of literature written by immigrants.



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