"This is from your family in Rwanda", Oprah said, handing me a tan envelope. She looked solemn, confident in her purpose. "From your father and your mother and your sisters and your brother". I opened the envelope and pulled out a sheet of blue paper. Then Oprah put her hand on mine to stop me … Continue reading Literature of Exile: Clemantine Wamariya and exile as performance
I used to think I was exiled from my country. But, in retracing the steps of my past, I have understood that I was exiled from my childhood. Which seems so much crueler. Exile is always a profoundly traumatic experience. But what of those exiled twice? While the world is largely aware of the Rwandan genocide … Continue reading Literature of Exile: Burundi’s Gaël Faye
Whoever writes is exiled from writing, which is the country—his own—where he is not a prophet. Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster This summer, while collaborating with Rachel Hildebrandt of GLLI and a group of undergraduates at Wofford College, in the midst of collating lists of contemporary literature in translation, I pondered the … Continue reading Rwandan Genocide, The Task of Translation, and Western Markets for Testimony: Part II – by Kim Rostan
Whoever writes is exiled from writing, which is the country—his own—where he is not a prophet. Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster When the Rwandan genocide began in 1994, the “era of testimony” (as dubbed by scholar Shoshana Felman) was already well underway. Following the Nazi genocide in Europe, there was initially relative … Continue reading Rwandan Genocide, The Task of Translation, and Western Markets for Testimony: Part I—by Kim Rostan
