Letters of Transit
Subtitle: Reflections on Exile and Memory
Contributors: New York Public Library (Corporate Author, Editor); Andre Aciman (Editor)
Publisher: New Press
Published: May 1, 1999
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 135
ISBN-13: 9781565845046
Subjects: Civil rights & citizenship; Collections & anthologies of various literary forms; Immigration & emigration; Other prose: from c 1900 -; General; American Essays; Literary Collections; Literature - Classics / Criticism; American English; Literary Criticism; USA; Emigration & Immigration; Essays; Emigration and immigration; Exiles
Description: Andre Aciman traces his migration from his home in Egypt to Italy, France, and the United States and compares his own transience with the unrootedness of many moderns. Eva Hoffman examines the crucial role of language and what happens when your first is lost. Returning to the political themes of his earlier work, Edward Said offers a personal exploration of his conflicting allegiances. Novelist Bharati Mukherjee analyzes her own struggle with assimilation.

Finally, Charles Simic remembers the comedy of bureaucracy he experienced as a sixteen-year-old "displaced person" in Paris after the war, and his thwarted attempts at "fitting in" in America.