Introduction
In: Immigrant and Ethnic-Minority Writers since 1945Search for other papers by Wiebke Sievers in
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Abstract
This volume studies immigrant and ethnic-minority writers in fourteen national contexts from a comparative perspective. When literary scholars historicise immigrant and ethnic-minority writing in their respective national contexts, they usually only focus on how this writing has become visible and how it has come to challenge the respective national literatures; they rarely tell us why this writing has remained invisible for such a long time in many of the contexts discussed here. Yet, as soon as we move beyond national contexts, this is the first question which comes to mind: How can we explain these differences, especially between countries that have very similar immigration histories? With this question in mind, we developed a comparative framework that would bring to light both of these perspectives in each chapter. The introduction serves to explain this framework as well as the selection of countries included in this volume.