Migrant Women Writers and the Short Story in North America

This book explores short fiction by migrant women writers in Canada and the United States from 1980 to 2020, including Jhumpa Lahiri, Edwidge Danticat, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jamaica Kincaid, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Shani Mootoo. It takes the reader on a rich, revealing journey through the contemporary short story scene, made up of stories by both established authors and lesser-known names. The stories considered display the diverse experiences, literary styles and concerns of migrant short story writers, and their common ongoing cross-cultural concerns with home, belonging and domesticity that characterise this genre. Across chapters scrutinising the roles and representations of language, food and dress in the stories, the book introduces a new way of theorising migrant short fiction through the concept of habitability. It explores the authors’ radical re-appropriation of domestic tropes and argues that the short story genre is naturally well-suited to writing by migrant women and to the hybridity and fragmentation of the migrant experience. By examining short stories as cultural artifacts, taking publishing contexts into consideration, and incorporating an exclusive bibliographical guide to short story collections published since 1980, this study analyses form alongside theme to offer new insights into migrant women’s contributions to the contemporary short story.