Authors
- Kolevinskienė Žydronė PhD (Humanities, Philology), Associate Professor
Annotation
In nowadays world the issue of mature modernity and similar personal identity remains of great signifi cance. The research is dedicated to the Americanborn authors and authors of Exodus. In today’s world, the real and the made-up Lithuania is both meaning and value for the identity of these writers. The American-born authors often name the relationship with Lithuania only as a symbolic construction determined by the values of its reference fi eld. However, this bond is vitally important and guarantees the continuity of nature in the world of crumbling meanings and splitting identities. In this case, the research focuses on a recently emerged phenomenon — the literature about Lithuania and its culture, history written in the English language. Authors of Lithuanian origin writing in English began speaking (and telling) about their cultural roots (Julij a Sukys, Lina Žilionytė, Daiva Markelis and others). The authors, who do not speak Lithuanian (the language of their parents), have approached the problem of the deepest valuable component of national identity, that of the language. A single, pure and national identity is replaced with formation of several, intersecting complementary cultures — a hybrid identity. The structure of national values of writers in a language other than Lithuanian is replaced with the new (most often English) language, which opens up new cultural possibilities, but limits the traditional ones.
A three-segment structure of national values — land, language, and history –can be used as a reference point when discussing the problems of identity in contemporary Lithuanian émigré literature. The problematics of identity and emigrant experience are revealed in texts written in English by North American authors of Lithuanian origin, such as Ruta Sepetys, Birute Putrius, Antanas Sileika and others. A novel The Jungle (1906) by Upton Sinclair serves as the main context. The book, which made the author world-famous, tells the story about life of Chicago workers, an ordinary Lithuanian family which immigrated to the United States at the beginning of the 20th century.
In order to fi nd and re-establish his or her inner center, an immigrant has to make an important choice. Contemporary Lithuanian émigré literature testifi es that this center has not yet been discovered or identifi ed. The country and home that émigré writers left behind are alien to them, however, a foreign land has not yet been domesticated. Therefore, very often a slightly romanticized emigrant idyll is replaced by a complaint, discontent, and disappointment. The myth of a good life collapses both in its own and in a foreign country.