Dos mons, una sola llengua. La narrativa en català escrita per immigrants

Abstract

This article analyses 33 works, written in the Catalan language, by 14 immigrant writers. It attempts to show how these authors have explained their experiences of migration and how they have interacted with Catalan host society. It explores how they understand Catalan identity and how they negotiate their own identities, caught between their cultures of birth and that of Catalonia. Most of the works studied are non-fictional. A third of the works are memoirs that offer up a variety of experiences coloured by each author’s gender, social class, and culture. The exploration of this literature suggests that the immigrant experience cannot be understood as a phenomenon of transplantation or uprooting alone, but rather as a productive grafting of cultures which enriches host society and acts as a medium for the expression of the longings of immigrants.