Worlds of exile: Nabokov, Rushdie, Kingston, Roy, and Diaz

In "Worlds of Exile," I define exile as a phenomenon of migrants who cannot surrender their past lifestyle, language, or culture without great anxiety. In the cases of Vladimir Nabokov, Salman Rushdie, Maxine Hong Kingston, Arundhati Roy, and Junot Diaz, their new language is English; their original homelands are Russia, China, India, and the Dominican Republic. Although exile entails highly personal experiences, these writers from a variety of different cultures describe them in astonishing similar ways. They create hybrid languages as if language itself could become a kind of abode from which they reorganize their new worlds.; Exile apparently frees these writers to play with language. Each writer invents his or her own version of English: Nabokov's English is fastidious and acrobatic; Rushdie delights in linguistic eclecticism; Roy emphasizes the capacity for language to be design by manipulating letters, saying that she enjoys their "look on a page"; Kingston marvels at the way English can create Chinese sounds; and Diaz shows how English and Spanish together form a musical hybrid. They all speak of having a passion for English: Nabokov delights in his "love affair" with English in Lolita; Roy says "I love English" and Kingston confesses an early attraction to English in her meditations on language. For these writers, language is less a pragmatic tool than a creature for which they have great feeling. Their shared habit of indulging in linguistic fetishes appears to compensate for their psychic uneasiness in a new physical environment.