Novels about immigrants and ethnic affirmation

Abstract

The presence of writers descending from immigrants and who write about their own group can be linked to the fact that, after successive generations, they reached some degree of adaptation to the new society in which they are living. As we try to evidence, the literary work can be seen as another form of identity assertion as ethnic group, no matter the author’s intentions are. If the contingents of immigrants were subject to quantitative analyses through data from official although imprecise sources, their descendants, for whom passports are no longer distinguishing elements, demand from historians the use of categories of analysis closer to social sciences. Some of the notions of visibility, naming, symbolic struggles and ethnic honor allow us to see literature as a form of ethnic acknowledgment.