Migration in Literature

What can literature tell us about migration? In her paper of the same title, Amy Burge (2020) highlights the role of literary essays and books on migration in questioning dominant narratives, providing alternative historical perspectives, and serving as a therapeutic practice. Above all, literature sheds light into the depths of the personal dimension of migration, or what the Palestinian-American émigré intellectual Edward W. Said called “scrupulous subjectivity.”  

Here are some useful anthologies and lists to start with:

• The Penguin Book of Migration Literature (2019): an anthology that features works by migrant writers from across time, space, and genre, compiled by professor Dohra Ahmad at St. Johns’s University.

• COMPAS recommendations – The best books on migration we read this year (2022): recommendations by the interdisciplinary team at Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford.

• Winners of the Immigrant Writing Prize by Restless Books publishing house

• 'Love, loss and longing': the best books on migration, chosen by writers (2020): the Guardian

• The list of 8 International Novels About Migration and Xenophobia (2019): compiled by writer Felicity Castagna

• Popular Immigrant Fiction Books on Goodreads website

• khōréō online magazine of speculative fiction and migration

• On Being Foreign: Culture Shock in Short Fiction, An International Anthology (1986). We thank MBS Member Torsten Kühlmann for this recommendation.