Going Beyond Migrancy: A Postmigrant Reading of Gish Jen's "Who's Irish" and Leila Aboulela's "Souvenirs"

The present paper examines the ways in which short stories, "Who's Irish" by the Chinese-American writer Gish Jen and "Souvenirs" by the Sudanese-Egyptian writer Leila Aboulela re-imagine states of belonging and family relationships in postmigration contexts. To do so, the paper adopts a postmigrant research perspective to analyze familiar key concepts such as belonging, home, family and identity. The concept of postmigration emerged in theater in early 2000's and then found its place in academic research with the aim of addressing gaps in studies on migration and broadening the perspective on the complex phenomenon of migration and its transformative effects on both immigrants and the hosts (Anne Ring Petersen, Moritz Schramm, and Frauke Wiegand 2019: 3). The paper draws on theories such as those offered by Roger Bromely on concepts of belonging and ethnicity to argue that even though these stories predate the academic conceptualization of postmigration, they represent the ways in which ascribed identities are challenged and new belongings are created. The research questions address how narratives under investigation problematize confining concepts on ethnicity, the ways in which family ties and relationships are affected in postmigration contexts and what these new spaces of belonging are like. The study concludes that "Who's Irish" and "Souvenirs" depict postmigrant "spaces of plurality" (Bromley 2017:39) which are conflictual but transcultural and trans-ethnic too.