Class Year
2018
Document Type
Student Research Paper
Date of Creation
Spring 2018
Department 1
Globalization Studies
Abstract
Oyeyemi is a Nigerian-British writer whose writing, like other immigrant authors', participates in a dialogue about and contestation of essentialized immigrant and ethnic identities that are a result of global and local processes. Her writing produces counter-narratives in which immigrant identities are multiple, conflicting, intersectional, and most of all self-represented. This paper explores readings of Oyeyemi accompanied by the following: an examination of globalization and flows of migration; the connections of national epistemologies through media to processes like migration: how literary canon has excluded transnational fiction from the mainstream, thereby decreasing the ability of multi-ethnic and im/migrant writers to represent themselves successfully; and finally the literary shift into a more nuanced understanding of multiculturalism, diaspora, nations, and borders through persistent critiques and re-interpretations by minority writers.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Mills, Susanna L., "Helen Oyeyemi and Border Identities: Contesting Western Representations of Immigrants through Transnational Literature" (2018). Student Publications. 605.
https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/student_scholarship/605
Included in
Fiction Commons, International and Area Studies Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons
Comments
Written as a senior capstone paper for Globalization Studies 440.