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Narrating Diaspora Across Media investigates contemporary narratives of diaspora in three distinct media formats: novels, feature films and graphic narratives. Its methodology brings together distinct branches from diaspora studies and narrative theory, both of which show a range of theoretical developments since the 1990s. Diaspora and migration literatures have drawn increasing scholarly attention to literary representations of diasporic experiences and their distinct manifestations across the various historical contexts of global migration. During the same period, narrative theory has undergone significant theoretical and methodological re-conceptions - from the structuralist and text-immanent approaches in the 1970s to today´s ´postclassical´ narratologies. Narrating Diaspora Across Media connects culture-oriented and transmedial narratologies and examines the ways in which recurrent themes in diaspora narratives are realised across media formats. With the interest in representations of space and time, this study asks questions about relationships between content and form and focuses on such themes as the journey, history and memory.

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CONTENTS



I. Introduction: Context, Narrative Form and Medium -
Viewing Today´s Diaspora Literatures 1

II. Diaspora Narratives 9
1. Diaspora: Conceptions and Tensions 9
2. Media Culture and Memory: Sharing Figures of Diaspora 27
2.1 From figures of diaspora to travelling schemata 27
2.2 Narratives and media culture 34
2.3 Diasporic Memory 48

III. Narrating Across Media 55
1. Narrative Form Re-loaded: Narratology in the Postclassical Age 55
2. Cultural and Transmedial Narratologies at the Crossroads 60
2.1 Narratology in/as Cultural Analysis 60
2.2 Cultural Narratology and Transmedial Conceptions 69

IV. Narrating Diaspora in Verbal and Visual Narratives 81
1. The Time-Space of Diaspora:
Using the Chronotope for the Study of Culture and Narrative 81
2. Journeys, Distance and the Semantics of Space 89
2.1 Multiple Journeys and Conceptions of Space 89
2.2 Novel: Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake 101
2.3 Film: Tony Ayres, The Home Song Stories 119
2.4 Graphic Narrative: Shaun Tan, The Arrival 138
3. The ´Homeland´ and its Histories: Diasporic Temporalities 157
3.1 History, Memory and ´Fissures´ in Narrative Time 157
3.2 Novel: Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao 170
3.3 Film: Atom Egoyan, Ararat 190
3.4 Graphic Narrative: GB Tran, Vietnamerica: A Family´s Journey 211

V. Conclusion: Media Representations and Diasporic Imaginations 237

VI. Works Cited 24

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