|
Advanced search
Previous page
|
Title
The ghosts that visit us as we dream and Figurative homelands: second-generation immigrant experiences in North American contemporary poetry |
Full text
https://hdl.handle.net/1842/37796; http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/era/1072 |
Date
2020 |
Author(s)
Pirmohamed, Alycia |
Contributor(s)
Gillis, Alan; Gamble, Miriam |
Abstract
The Ghosts That Visit Us as We Dream is a poetic manuscript that observes my family's
immigration from Tanzania to Canada. The poems are voiced from a variety of familial
perspectives to capture how identity reforms and transforms throughout generations.
Several of the poems were written as part of my research trip to Tanzania in January
2019, while others meditate on my experiences of growing up in Alberta, Canada. This
manuscript principally employs repetitions and figurations of the natural world to
reflect on wider themes of womanhood, belonging, cultural dissonance, loss,
homeland, and spirituality. Water, in all its forms, becomes one of the collection's
major metaphors, representing liminality, crossings, and time as recursive. My work
traverses the borders between the imaginary, the inherited, and the present moment.
Figurative Homelands: Second-generation Immigrant Experiences in North American Contemporary
Poetry examines how second-generation immigrants figuratively represent their North
American and ancestral homelands in poetry. It includes a critical analysis of the poetic
works of South Asian, Muslim second-generation immigrants, Kazim Ali, Fatimah
Asghar and Tarfia Faizullah, and evaluates how they fuse the literal with the figurative
in order to explore, give expression to, and take ownership of multidimensional
identities. It examines the poetics of diaspora, specifically considering second-generation immigrant diasporic identities, from a multidirectional approach. Moreover,
it builds upon the framework of what Sadia Abbas calls the 'new Islam,' and examines
how figurative homelands are constructed within the context of conflictual experiences
arising from Islamophobia in the period following 9/11. This research also evaluates
how second-generation immigrants craft figurative homelands using intergenerational
storytelling and childhood remembrances. Additionally, it examines how loss manifests
for writers who live in liminality, and how contradictory experiences or multiplicity are
illustrated by gaps in both a poem's formal structure and its conceptual landscape. |
Subject(s)
homeland; diaspora; South Asian diaspora; poetry; second-generation Immigrant; North America; America; Islamophobia; immigration; contemporary poetry; landscape |
Language
en |
Publisher
The University of Edinburgh |
Type of publication
Thesis or Dissertation; Doctoral; PhD Doctor of Philosophy |
Format
application/pdf |
Rights
2021-11-30 |
Repository
Edinburgh - University of Edinburgh
|
Added to C-A: 2021-07-26;09:47:32 |
© Connecting-Africa 2004-2024 | Last update: Friday, March 8, 2024 |
Webmaster
|