Poetry

Exile and Refuge, and the new american

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Abstract

As an immigrant woman, an academic of diaspora studies, a white "other" in a sea of American whiteness, I navigate the layers of difference that are always contextual, never fixed, at times a deficit, at times an abundance, a surplus.

I believe in the practice of "counterpoint": When divergent, competing cultural elements come into contact with one another, the continuing processes of adaptation and creation shift existing power dynamics. People and cultures always mutually influence and transform each other through the encounters - and often “crashes” - of languages, customs and worldviews. Naturally, cultural productions come to reflect these processes.

My life is a constant, shifting, exhausting and yet rewarding process of "counterpoint", an alchemy, a translation.

These poems manifest this quality of translation, which is both my curse and my lens through which I observe and make sense of the world.

Keywords: Caribbean, Exile, other immigrant woman, multiculturalism, transcultration, Italy, UK, migration, American

How to Cite:

Preziuso, M., (2018) “Exile and Refuge, and the new american”, Journal of Critical Thought and Praxis 7(1).