In Search of an Open Space Among Two Migrant Writers: Ying Chen and Dany Laferrière. For A Theoretical Reflection On Migrant Literature and Space

Abstract

The contamination between hermeneutical tools of geography and literature, at the basis of a 'cartographical turn' underway in the humanistic disciplines, has allowed us to analyze reality from a different perspective, renewing the epistemological approach to literary texts. It is a particularly fruitful analysis for migrant literature that bears its inscription with space in the adjective that defines it and which expresses nomadism and wandering, mobility and the idea of crossing boundaries that characterize its works. In this study, we will analyze the native places, revisited as places of return, by juxtaposing them with the places of reception in Ying Chen's Quatre mille marches (2004) and Dany Laferrière's  L’énigme du retour (2009). Chen, of Chinese origin, narrates her return to Shanghai in this book and seizes this opportunity to reflect on the significance of this hometown for her, as well as that of her new adopted world. Her return to this place of origin inevitably involves a return to the past, which, in her view, exists solely to shed light on the present. On the other hand, Laferrière allows for a temporal coexistence of the past and the present in his book. This return to the original space appears to be a favorable opportunity that effectively transports him through time, enabling a convergence of two poles that initially seem marked by conflict rather than reconciliation