Migration Literature in Translation

'This important study challenges the assumption of readers as homogeneous, nationally circumscribed individuals. The author skillfully integrates textual analysis with sociological perspectives on representation, border writing, race, migration and erasure, urging a reassessment of how diverse readers engage with translated texts, including their responses to translation decisions and awareness of hybrid languages.'

Moira Inghilleri, University of Massachusetts (Amherst), USA

'In this riveting, remarkably multifaceted study, Cussel sheds fresh light on the ways in which translated literary texts are read in different settings. Novel and ambitious comparative research allows her to question reading practices governed by ideas of "authenticity" or "identity" – we are, instead, encouraged to recognise reading as a situated and complex encounter.'

Andrew Smith, University of Glasgow, UK

Survival for immigrants requires translation. Yet translation is about impostorship, meaning that immigrants only succeed through the abandonment and reinvention of the self. Cussel attempts to sort out this conundrum—as we move to a new land and acquire a new tongue, are we still one or many? Have we become false versions of who we were? Or perhaps clones ready for an equalizing future?—by analyzing a handful of Latino texts and inviting readers to a poll. The result is a monograph—gotcha!—that is itself a translation.

Ilan Stavans, author of I Am Nobody.