Rejection of Victimhood in Literature: By Abdulrazak Gurnah, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Luis Alberto Ureea, by Sean James Bosman (Leiden: Brill, 2021)

Abstract

In recent years, both the UK and the US have been conceptualized as hostile spaces for migrants and racialized communities, with nationalist and right-wing discourses ever-present in the context of Brexit, Donald Trump’s inauguration and the brutal murder of George Floyd in 2020 (Bosman 2021: 2). Preoccupations with racist and hegemonic violence are also reflected in literature and its narrative treatment of marginalized migrants, with authors such as Abdulrazak Gurnah, Viet Thanh Nguyen and Luis Alberto Urrea exploring memory, belonging and institutional violence in relation to diasporic spaces. In his book, Rejection of Victimhood in Literature: By Abdulrazak Gurnah, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Luis Alberto Urrea, Bosman discusses the representations of transnational individuals and communities in the work of these three authors, paying particular attention to their rejection of essentialist conceptualizations of migrants as helpless victims, and as unable to enact agency. Throughout the book, Bosman focuses on and establishes numerous comparisons between the works of Gurnah, Nguyen and Urrea in order to critically examine how hegemonic discourses affect transitional subjects and stories.