Norwick became Britain’s first City of Refuge in

Norwick became Britain’s first City of Refuge in 2007 as part of the International Cities of Refuge Network. The goal of these cities is to protected exiled writers and promote free speech. All of these cities “offer residency to politically exiled writers and promote tolerance and understanding in their home communities.” (http://www.writerscentrenorwich.org.uk/norwichcityofrefuge.aspx)

The idea for these cities is based on the Cities of Asylum which were founded by the  International Parliament of Writers in 1993 by Salman Rushdie, Vaclav Havel, Margaret Drabble and Jacques Derrida and others responding to assassinations in Algeria.

Norwich is also a UNESCO City of Literature.

Britain’s second City of Refuge is Edinburgh. 

British Cities of Refuge for Persecuted Writers

I just potentially stumbled upon something fascinating. There is an International Cities of Refuge Network that protects writers in exile from persecution, and two British cities are part of the Network. It’s fascinating and I want to learn more about it.

Exile: A Response and Compilation of Meanings

Exile has many meanings, both literal and figurative, in the realm of history and of literature. At its most basic level, exile comes from Latin and means “to leap out” (Imbert), which implies a sense of motion, both “compelling” and “propelling.” Exile has many different manifestations even in its literal sense.

The most in depth I get within the literature on exile, the more tensions I discover. There are discussions of exile in the broadest sense devoid of colonization or post-colonialism (Writers in Exile by Andrew Gurr). Gurr paints exile as the condition of being modern (he was writing in the 1980’s).

Within the field of post-colonialism, there seems to be a lot of overlap and debate over postcolonialism as a kind of exile and more literal exile. For example, Chinedu Ogoke describes what he calls “psychic exile” which is the fate of colonized people everywhere (Ogoke 50). In many sources, there is a discussion of how the presence of exile puts the colonized in exile from his native home  and culture, even without transcending physical boundaries. Mugo however scorns at the idea of exile being anything but forced and literal.

Tied to this is the question of language, and the connection between exile and alienation. Is one alienated from one’s culture and language and identity or exiled from it? Can one be both?

These are just a few summary thoughts about the research I’ve done so far. Tomorrow, I hope to annotate a bibliography of sources I’ve read before delving into the authors themselves.

“The argument, then, is that exile is not a normal choice; rather, it is a step in the victim’s refusal to become a martyr or an adventurer in a situation where state terror is the rule of law. It is a dignified attempt to retain control of one’s imagination as it is threatened with invasion and silencing: a determination not to have one’s conscience buried under persecution of negative silence. Above all, it is a calculated retreat from a bombaarded war zone and surrounded battlefront, not a permanent withdrawal from, or abandonment of, a continuing struggle. Indeed, the progressive exiled writer uses displacement to create new networks of resistance away from home, joining with other internationalist struggles against injustice, oppression, and dehumanization.

Micere Githae Mugo. “Exile and Creativity: A Prolonged Writer’s Block.” African Literature: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory. pg 149

Notes on Micere Mugo’s “Exile and Creativity: A Prolonged Writer’s Block

Mugo is a Kenyan writer living in the United States. Definitely someone I want to check out!

Mugo fights against the idea of “self-emposed exile,” calling it “not only a contradiction in terms but a perversion of reality” (148). She believes that state terror forces people into exile. Interestingly, however, she says that in certain situations, the conditions for the writer at home are more acute than actual exile, forcing the writer to leave. 

Mugo herself was blamed for leaving the country. Countries create propaganda about the fate of exiles. Exile created a writer’s block for Mugo originally, and only after the anguish was she able to begin writing again.

It may be argue…

It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity. Which seems to me self-evidently true; but I guesst that the writer who is out-of-country and even out-of-language may experience this loss in an intensified form. It is made more concrete for him by thte physcial fact of discontinuity, of his present being in a different place from his past, of his being “elsewhere”. This may enable him to speak properly and concretely on a subject of universal significance and appeal.

Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands, pg 12

It may be that …

It may be that writers in my position, exiles or emigrants or expatiates, are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutated into pillars of salt. But if we do look back, we must also do so in the knowledge—which gives rise to profound uncertainties—that our physical alientation from India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; that we will, in short, create fictions, not actually cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind.

Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands. pg 10

Post-colonial r…

Post-colonial readers are obliged at every moment to reframe their vision according to concrete historical circumstances that differ from their own. They must become “travelers” between contrasting semiological and ethical oceans; in other words, they must become translators adept at readign the foreign language of forms. But aesthetic judgment is complicated by the tendency of Western readers to assimilate even the most radically experimental writing to European categories of thought, as if post-colonial writers’ long indenture to European culture made them incapable of any independent literary production.

Lucy Stone McNeece, “Paradoxes of Post-Colonial Fiction.” North-South Linkages. pg 516

The paradox is,…

The paradox is, in fact, true only in appearance, for the African creative artist has always had a double audience. His will to be heard by the oppressor is at least as strong as his desire to improve the lot of his compatriots. Born under the sign of collective protestation, AFrican literature has always been wary of art for art’s sake. It is less interested by the completion of beautiful individual works than by the urgency of resolving social problems that are sometimes dramatic. During the period of struggle for national liberation, one had to deal with the most urgent first. The language of the occupier had the merit o being there. The African intellectuals have known where to draw the passwords that have ensured their cohesion facing a common enemy.

Boubacar Boris Diop, “Write and….Keep your Mouth Shut.” North-South Linkages. 56

The story of th…

The story of this uprooting, the stories of the factors that brought it about and of the consequences which resulted from it are part of our common historical heritage; it is also a very important part of the collective memory of hmanity. Likewise, we must all, regardless of who we are, of where we come from, keep alive this memory, enrich it and transmit it from generation to generation without forgetting the weight of pain and injustice it carries, but also the fierce struggles for liberty, for justice and for the respect of the dignity of the individual which are all natural aspirations of every human being.

Amadou Mahtar M’Bow, “Reflections on the Trans-Saharan Cultural and Literary Relations and the Same Relations Between the Continent and the African Diasporas Across the Atlantic Ocean.” in North-South Linkages and the Connections in Continental and Diaspora African Literatures. pg 20