Metropolitan (Im)migrants in the "Lettered City"

Abstract

In her article Metropolitan (Im)migrants in the 'Lettered City' Stacey Balkan employs Angel Rama's discussion of audience as a means of analyzing a Latin American diaspora that exists beyond the rational periphery of the state. Herein, the term diaspora is redefined as a translocal phenomenon wherein the metropolitan (im)migrant moves from rural margin to urban center. Normative definitions of exile — persons displaced from autonomous nation-states — are likewise scrutinized in the context of what Balkan terms a post-contemporary city of letters. This postcontemporary city is the subject of what Mabel Morana refers to as a subaltern boom — that is, the McOndo generation. Balkan discusses the work of Roberto Bolano, Daniel Alarcon, and Junot Diaz who employ such narrative signatures as invisibility to reify the ephemeral (or lettered) city while also amplifying the predicament of the now urban Indian living within its borders. Stacey Balkan, Metropolitan (Im)migrants in the 'Lettered City' page 2 of 10 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 14.5 (2012): Special issue New Work about the Journey and Its Portrayals. Ed. I-Chun Wang