Journal of Literary Multilingualism, special issue on Global Migration and Literary Multilingualism

Although most migrants are not writers, thousands of writers find themselves adjusting to lives as strangers in strange lands. A crucial and formidable part of that adjustment often requires adopting a new language. A rich body of literature by or about migrants is translingual; it is written in a language other than its author’s first language. And much of the literature of migration records the convergence – sometimes conflict – of different languages. This special issue of the Journal of Literary Multilingualism brings together studies of how the experience of dislocation has been represented in literature and the role that literary multilingualism plays in this. It would be impossible for one issue of one journal to encompass the full range of global migration, even just within the contemporary period. The essays we have gathered here study texts whose narrators or protagonists begin in Afghanistan, Bolivia, Bosnia, Hungary, Korea, Poland, Puerto Rico, and Romania and end up in Brazil, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, and the United States. Because global migration is a leading cause in the mingling and collision of languages, it is a fitting topic for this special issue of the Journal of Literary Multilingualism.