Elusive Better Future: Identity Crisis Among Immigrants in Yesterday’s People

Reminiscences of the past and melancholic feelings have often been present in the literature of the diaspora, which illustrates the fact that the life of an immigrant has never been easy since s/he has to deal with many unfavourable circumstances. Immigrant identity cannot remain exactly the same a...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal:	Maja Ćuk
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN FR SR
Publicado:	University of Belgrade 2020
Materias:	immigrants diasporic literature cultural identity Yesterday’s People Goran Simić Stuart Hall Anthropology GN1-890
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/5446678ac2b84e3bac2f51a01d4f9653
Etiquetas:	Agregar Etiqueta Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!

id	oai:doaj.org-article:5446678ac2b84e3bac2f51a01d4f9653
record_format	dspace
spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:5446678ac2b84e3bac2f51a01d4f96532021-12-02T12:02:48ZElusive Better Future: Identity Crisis Among Immigrants in Yesterday’s People10.21301/eap.v15i1.60353-15892334-8801https://doaj.org/article/5446678ac2b84e3bac2f51a01d4f96532020-04-01T00:00:00Zhttps://eap-iea.org/index.php/eap/article/view/1038https://doaj.org/toc/0353-1589https://doaj.org/toc/2334-8801 Reminiscences of the past and melancholic feelings have often been present in the literature of the diaspora, which illustrates the fact that the life of an immigrant has never been easy since s/he has to deal with many unfavourable circumstances. Immigrant identity cannot remain exactly the same after arrival in a new cultural milieu. Elements of the original identity may be lost or transformed into new forms. Old selves cannot be completely assimilated into the new cultural pattern. Apart from this, there are other obstacles, which are presented in a symbolic way in Goran Simić’s collection of short stories Yesterday’s People. This Canadian author of Serbian origin has compiled a dossier of Yugoslavian immigrants in Canada who left the country in the last decade of the twentieth century due to the horrors of the war in Bosnia. Since they emigrated in a tumultuous social climate when the foundations of the old cultural identity had been destabilized and called into question, they cannot deal in a productive way with a new phase of their life in the diaspora and find their purpose at the moment . Similarly, to his protagonists, Goran Simić was affected by the Bosnian conflict, but he has succeeded in reshaping himself in his new surroundings, reworking his memories in a creative way and integrating into Canadian literature as a writer. However, scarred and traumatized yesterday’s people in his stories cannot grapple successfully with the existential problems and their identity crises, and they are constantly wedged between the haunting past and the elusively better future. The aim of this paper is to discuss the possible problems at the “meeting point” between the discourses and practices which shaped immigrants’ identity in their native land and the processes which construct them as subjects in the present, by relying on Stuart Hall’s theoretical views in “Who needs an Identity”. Maja ĆukUniversity of Belgradearticleimmigrantsdiasporic literaturecultural identityYesterday’s PeopleGoran SimićStuart HallAnthropologyGN1-890ENFRSREtnoantropološki Problemi, Vol 15, Iss 1 (2020)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN FR SR
topic	immigrants diasporic literature cultural identity Yesterday’s People Goran Simić Stuart Hall Anthropology GN1-890
spellingShingle	immigrants diasporic literature cultural identity Yesterday’s People Goran Simić Stuart Hall Anthropology GN1-890 Maja Ćuk Elusive Better Future: Identity Crisis Among Immigrants in Yesterday’s People
description	Reminiscences of the past and melancholic feelings have often been present in the literature of the diaspora, which illustrates the fact that the life of an immigrant has never been easy since s/he has to deal with many unfavourable circumstances. Immigrant identity cannot remain exactly the same after arrival in a new cultural milieu. Elements of the original identity may be lost or transformed into new forms. Old selves cannot be completely assimilated into the new cultural pattern. Apart from this, there are other obstacles, which are presented in a symbolic way in Goran Simić’s collection of short stories Yesterday’s People. This Canadian author of Serbian origin has compiled a dossier of Yugoslavian immigrants in Canada who left the country in the last decade of the twentieth century due to the horrors of the war in Bosnia. Since they emigrated in a tumultuous social climate when the foundations of the old cultural identity had been destabilized and called into question, they cannot deal in a productive way with a new phase of their life in the diaspora and find their purpose at the moment . Similarly, to his protagonists, Goran Simić was affected by the Bosnian conflict, but he has succeeded in reshaping himself in his new surroundings, reworking his memories in a creative way and integrating into Canadian literature as a writer. However, scarred and traumatized yesterday’s people in his stories cannot grapple successfully with the existential problems and their identity crises, and they are constantly wedged between the haunting past and the elusively better future. The aim of this paper is to discuss the possible problems at the “meeting point” between the discourses and practices which shaped immigrants’ identity in their native land and the processes which construct them as subjects in the present, by relying on Stuart Hall’s theoretical views in “Who needs an Identity”.
format	article
author	Maja Ćuk
author_facet	Maja Ćuk
author_sort	Maja Ćuk
title	Elusive Better Future: Identity Crisis Among Immigrants in Yesterday’s People
title_short	Elusive Better Future: Identity Crisis Among Immigrants in Yesterday’s People
title_full	Elusive Better Future: Identity Crisis Among Immigrants in Yesterday’s People
title_fullStr	Elusive Better Future: Identity Crisis Among Immigrants in Yesterday’s People
title_full_unstemmed	Elusive Better Future: Identity Crisis Among Immigrants in Yesterday’s People
title_sort	elusive better future: identity crisis among immigrants in yesterday’s people
publisher	University of Belgrade
publishDate	2020
url	https://doaj.org/article/5446678ac2b84e3bac2f51a01d4f9653
work_keys_str_mv	AT majacuk elusivebetterfutureidentitycrisisamongimmigrantsinyesterdayspeople
_version_	1718394747945484288

Elusive Better Future: Identity Crisis Among Immigrants in Yesterday’s People

Ejemplares similares