Narratives for a New Belonging Review

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Narratives for a New Belonging ReviewMigration, as Roger Bromley informs us in his introduction to Narratives for a New Belonging , has been the ' quintessential experience' of the twentieth century. More people moved in the last century than ever before in world history, and the global movement of peoples has resulted in formation of a number of diasporic communities with their own particular characteristics. This phenomenon of the displacement is however not only a condition of the first world. Third world countries have to cope with the increasing influx of migrant labor from rural areas into urban cities. Also, as Bromley reminds us , in the realm of the cultural , border crossing as a concept is not confined to the literal migrant .
Current analytical models drawn from post colonialism are not adequate for exploring new forms of multi-culturality that are in the process of emerging. What is needed is an theoretical framework that goes beyond formulations of cultural imperialism, and simplified binarisms. In this context, the concept of the ' diasporic community' becomes increasingly useful, particularly in the circumstances of contemporary globalization of economic and social spheres. What makes this book particularly relevant to the search for a new directions for cultural analysis is Bromley's focus on creative narratives by migrant writers that transgress ideas of essentialism . The seminal importance of migrant writing, he explains, is that these are texts written from the 'affective experience of social marginality' and from the 'perspective of the edge' - they offer alternative ways of seeing and thinking , and thereby allow for narratives of 'plurality, fluidity, and always emergent becoming'.
In a well nuanced introduction, Bromley clarifies his intention as seeking to examine the diasporic and the transnational through the 'lens of cultural fictions' , and to place his critical formulations within the context of today's global economy. According to Bromley, the political changes that took place in 1989 marked the end of 'a bi-polar power system', and were responsible for an increasing sense of 'a fundamental political, social and economical impasse in ways of thinking of the future'. He suggests the possibility of the narratives under study as providing space for a critical distance necessary to break the post- 1989 'ideological gridlock ' .
The cross cultural texts selected for analysis are by hyphenated writers (Black/Asian-British, Chinese-American, Indo- Caribbean, Asian-Canadian etc), situated in the metropolitan centers of Britain, Canada and the United States. These contemporary 'borderline' fictions 'speak from and across migrant identities'. Most of the texts have been written in the 1990s and add therefore to the contemporaneity of Bromley's argument. Also a large number of the narratives are by women shaped by a denial of identity , both within the diasporic community, and by the dominant culture of the host nation (Bharati Mukherjee, Meera Syal, Amy Tan, Gloria Anzaldua among others). Bromley points out that boundaries exist not only at the border posts of geo-political spaces or nations, but also within persons, communities and in discourse . Dislocation is a significant trope in the work of writers who have made literal journeys from the third world to the first , or who have to journey against certain fixed notions of origin , and negotiate across 'heavily policed zones of identity ' . His principal concerns include memory, silenced history , and transnational discursive border crossing . Almost all the works discussed are concerned with those for whom categories of belonging have been made unstable ' as a consequence of the experience of post colonial migrant circumstances'. There is , running through the book, an underlying note of anxiety about dominant Anglo -centric perspectives from within white host nation-states. Bromley examines how creative writing by the migrant writer can offer a 'de-linking' or 'unharnessing' of cultural narratives from Eurocentrist cultural paradigms.
It is refreshing to read a critical work that goes beyond abstract theoretical formulations. Bromley is able to adeptly interweave theory with textual analysis in a lucid style which makes his formulations easily accessible . He adopts an approach that combines the analytical with the empirical. In order to discuss the narratives of the excluded , it is essential to understand the complex terrain in which diasporic subjectivity has to negotiate difference. There are six chapters in all and each chapter begins by taking cognizance of the historical context of translation ; the geo-political journey of the immigrant community under survey, and also the internal conflicts of specific diasporas.
Bromley critically applies theoretical concepts put forth by a range of cultural theorists - Bakhtin, Lyotard, Deleuze, Guattari, Hall, Bhabha, Brah and Gilroy among others - to narratives grouped together according to geo-locations of the receiving society (the United States, Canada and Britain). These concepts are used as take-off points for individual chapters. For instance, Bromley widens Stuart Hall's concept of the third scenario ( 'a non binarist space of reflection ') into the working idea of the third space. Characters with hyphenated identities pose problems in terms of classification , and therefore raise questions about notions of essential difference. Hall also describes this dialectic of belonging and not belonging as somewhere-in-between' . Bromley discusses the fictions he has selected as constructed around figures who 'look in from outside while looking out from inside to the extent that both inside and outside lose their defining contours '. Thus a third space emerges that challenges fixed assumptions of identity, and he reads this as a vital ' space for revaluation' . Discussions of form and language are also crucial elements throughout. Bromley illustrates how 'multilingual, poly-vocal, vari-focal, inter-textual, multi-accented ' texts work against the propensity of the dominant culture to homogenize. Transformation and textual negotiation are also examined as key features of the uses of language in border writing.Narratives for a New Belonging Overview

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