Contemporary Stories of Deportation and Migration

doi:10.1017/9781108976459.015

Chapter 14 - Contemporary Stories of Deportation and Migration

from Part III - Mobilities

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2022

Robert McKee Irwin

Edited by

Mónica Szurmuk and

Debra A. Castillo

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Mónica Szurmuk: Affiliation:
Universidad Nacional de San Martín and National Scientific and Technical Research Council, Argentina
Debra A. Castillo: Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York

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Summary

This chapter focuses on recently published personal stories of migration, whether in the form of narratives of migrants asserting their autonomy of movement as they confront ever more abundant and perilous challenges, or of repatriated migrants unable to respond to a highly fortified border industrial complex that subordinates them with ever harsher callousness and cruelty. These stories – a travel narrative by a Haitian migrant, a series of children’s books written by deported mothers, and a digital storytelling project – reflect recent phenomena that have yet to be taken up meaningfully in more prestigious and widely distributed works. The chapter focuses on testimonial genres, with the aim of understanding their effectiveness in communicating lived experiences within and across the open wounds of contemporary borders in the Americas and in relating the emotional consequences of forced displacement, undocumented border crossing, migrant criminalization, xenophobic violence, and detention and deportation regimes. These stories were all published with a certain urgency from what for many migrants remains the deepest, most painful, and longest-festering lesion in the Americas, the USA–Mexico borderlands. These stories’ poignancy is achieved less through literariness than from raw experience, as they document new dynamics of human displacement in the Americas.

Keywords

migration deportation border testimonial narrative open wound

Type: Chapter
Information: Latin American Literature in Transition 1980–2018 , pp. 215 - 230

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108976459.015 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2022

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