THE ‘COLOUR’ OF IMMIGRANT LITERATURE IN THE SELECTED FICTION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN AND WHITE AMERICAN WRITERS

Year 2021, Volume: 5 Issue: 3, 81 - 92, 31.12.2021

Mine Sevinc

Abstract

Paris is a metropolitan city with its urban characteristics that have been shaped by its artistic monuments and history. There was a wave of immigration by white Americans to Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century. This wave of immi-grants included several artists, journalists, and writers, who were disillusioned by the promises of the New World, America. These were as Gertrude Stein’s described created a ‘lost generation’ in Europe. At the second half of the twentieth century, there appeared another wave of immigration to Europe, this time mainly by Afri-can-Americans. Their experiences and conditions differed from that of white pio-neers. They were more liberal and stood for freedom rather than getting lost in Par-is. Their previous situation in America was one of restlessness; they had to run away from hatred levelled against their skin colour or sexuality. They pointed to social problems back in America and pronounced the freedom of speech they earned Paris. This article aims to explore the extent to which the African-American literary experience of Paris after World War II differed from that of white American writers earlier in the century. The paper critically compares the selected fiction by accomplished authors such as Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1926), F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘Babylon Revisited’ (1931), Richard Wright’s The Outsider (1953) and James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room (1956). This article concludes that the two literary experience that were shaped in Paris vigorously differed in their motives and motivations in reflecting the expectations of exile, the experience of sexuality and the treatment of women.

Keywords

Paris, World War II, Immigrant Literature, Sexuality, Exile

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