ABSTRACT |
For various reasons, from political exile to professional
choice, some writers from once-colonized nations have taken part in the
twentieth-century condition of migrancy. This is the case of the exiled
Bombay-born Salman Rushdie and Derek Walcott, born in St Lucia, and now
a commuter between Boston and Trinidad. Of course, not all postcolonial
writers live outside their countries of origin. But what is true is that
many contemporary influential writers have, sooner or later, emigrated.
One single explanation for the exiled nature of all these postcolonial
writers is that Western universities offer, not only more job
opportunities, but also more money. Nevertheless, another important and
less pragmatic reason why postcolonial literature holds such a special
place in Western countries stems from the fact that native
‘authenticity’ has a market value in the West, and that postcolonial
writers exploit an ‘Orientalist’ consumer demand in their novels or
poems by offering images of the exotic ‘East’. In fact, some critics
have argued that the proliferation of Third World’s texts in the West is
partly due to the demands of the marketplace. Here, the novels of Salman
Rushdie, Arundatti Roy, and the work of Nobel Prizewinners such as Wole
Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, Derek Walcott, and recently J.M. Coetzee come
interestingly into play. This paper intends to analyze from this
postcolonial perspective the American success of Irish-American writers
such as Frank McCourt with his debut work Angela’s Ashes (1996).
His welcoming reception by the American audience can respond to what one
critic calls a way of ‘welcoming otherness’. By ‘authenticating’ their
own oppression as postcolonial subjects and by responding to the
outsider’s longing for an ‘exotic’ world of bards where romanticism and
mysticism seems to be undamaged, it seems that Irish writers can secure
a place for themselves both economically and intellectually in the
United States. I will explore this aspect of contemporary Irish
literature, which until now had been overlooked by critics.
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