Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language, and Loss

by André Aciman (Editor/contributor)

"Moving, deeply introspective and honest" ( Publishers Weekly ) reflections on exile and memory from five award-winning authors. All of the authors in Letters of Transit have written award-winning works on exile, home, and memory, using the written word as a tool for revisiting their old homes or fashioning new ones. Now in paperback are five newly commissioned essays offering moving distillations of their most important thinking on these themes. Andre Aciman traces his migrations and compares his own transience with the uprootedness of many moderns. Eva Hoffman examines the crucial role of language and what happens when your first one is lost. Edward Said defends his conflicting political and cultural allegiances. Novelist Bharati Mukherjee explores her own struggle with assimilation. Finally, Charles Simic remembers his thwarted attempts at "fitting in" in America.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Travel, Memoir, History, Anthologies, Literary Criticism

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

André Aciman was born in Alexandria, Egypt and is an American memoirist, essayist, novelist, and scholar of seventeenth-century literature. He has also written many essays and reviews on Marcel Proust. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Paris Review, The New Republic, Condé Nast Traveler as well as in many volumes of The Best American Essays. Aciman received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University, has taught at Princeton and Bard and is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at The CUNY Graduate Center. He is currently chair of the Ph. D. Program in Comparative Literature and founder and director of The Writers' Institute at the Graduate Center.

Aciman is the author of the Whiting Award-winning memoir Out of Egypt (1995), an account of his childhood as a Jew growing up in post-colonial Egypt. Aciman has published two other books: False Papers: Essays in Exile and Memory (2001), and a novel Call Me By Your Name (2007), which was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and won the Lambda Literary Award for Men's Fiction (2008). His forthcoming novel Eight White Nights (FSG) will be published on February 14, 2010

Reviews

[Anna Carr · Rating 4 out of 5]

What is emigration and exile? How do you deal with them? I particularly loved how Eva Hoffman and Bharati Mukherjee answer these question. Hoffman - for being sharply honest about diasporism and nomadism becoming 'fashionable' in our culture. Mukherjee - for the very differention of emigration, exile, and expatriation. What does one seek when she leaves her country? What is the level of guilt and sacrifice of each and every category of migrants? With questions like this, here is an apt book to read.

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't encounter much success in terms of books yesterday. It was a nice trip to Nashville. I enjoyed the conversation, which I need to stress was relaxed and intermittent. There was also an excellent barbecue turkey. Oh, and the music. I satisfied my interest in hillbilly music with some cool acquisitions but I didn't find a haul of interesting books there was The Novel: A Biography and this. Not much else. I picked this up and imagined my wife would find it interesting. She did. After sighing at the stack of CDs I had purchased she grabbed this slim tome and sat and read Simic's piece. I then read that one first so we could discuss such. I then spent a frigid January morning with the other four installments on exile, memory and using a language that isn't your "native" one -- whatever that means. I was duly impressed by Aciman's and will immediately read his memoir Out of Egypt. I wasn't as impressed by Hoffman's as it was overly political and did appear a touch dated (all of these pieces were commissioned in the late 1990s) but matters ended strong with sequential stellar provocations by Mukherjee, Said and Simic.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Neriman · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a wonderful collection of essays. I particularly enjoyed Edward Said’s piece and Charles Simic’s. Simic’s poetic language is blended smoothly into his prose—I felt as though I was having coffee with him, listening to his meditations on exile.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked only the Said's and Simic's.

[Julieta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Le pondría un 4,5/5 más bien si se pudiera. Cinco relatos muy elegantes, honestos and profundos, algunos más que otros he de decir.
Gracias Saleh por el préstamo, me ha gustado mucho.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Letters of Transit consists of five essays about home, immigration, exile, and what it means to call a place "yours". Of the five essays, I enjoyed reading the first, Shadow Cities by Andre Aciman, the most. It seemed to be the least pretentious of the lot, and I appreciated his descriptions of a crumbling park on the lower east side that reminded him of different grand European cities. Actually, when I visit another city, I often like to compare and relate it to New York.

Perhaps purposefully, perhaps not, the writers represent a mixture of ethnicities: Egyptian, Polish, Jewish, Yugoslavian, Palestinian, Indian...which I liked.

The style of the essays is very college-age-English-major-trying-to-impress-their-professor. Still, there are some interesting insights in the essays. Edward Said presented himself as a supporter of Palestine, which, as he himself said, is a side often thought of as the "enemy" in American politics. As a Jewish person with relatives in Israel, I at first compulsively disagreed with his stance, but upon reading the entire essay was very glad to read about an opinion differing from mine.
Overall, this is not a light summer read, it is more of a sitting on the train wanting to stimulate your brain kind of book.

[Melissa S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in the early 90s, every essay in this short book, examining the positive and negative effects of leaving one's country of birth, either by choice or due to circumstance, is still far too relevant today. Obviously each of the authors are well-respected and successful scholars, so they can all look back at their pasts from a place of relative material comfort, but the issues and ideas they raise are important. They're also very readable, which is nice. :-) I would love to see a companion work to this done today with a 21st century perspective and other countries' voices.

[Joanna Eleftheriou · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just reread Mukherjee's essay, which distinguishes immigrants from expatriates. She compares herself to her sister, and explains how her sister holds on to her Indian-ness much more intentionally than she does. I love how this essay explains quite clearly so much about expatriation and what America is, but also asks questions, equivocates, and urges more toward giving up secure notions rather than for the adoption of new ones.

[Ola Wojciechowska · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oceniłam 5/5 nie tylko ze względu na tematykę, którą zaczęłam się interesować, lecz przede wszystkim za głęboką wrażliwość Evy Hoffman. Czy faktycznie każdy człowiek staje się Nomadem, czy tracimy powoli umiejętność połączenia się z jednym miejscem i ciągle musimy wędrować, nie wiedząc właściwie, czego szukamy?
Poruszyła mnie też część Andre Acimana. Przywiązanie do jednego miejsca, to panika, gdy zmienia się to, co było dla nas dobre i nostalgiczne. Chociaż refleksje dotyczą bezpośrednio straty, tożsamości, emigracji, są tak naprawdę uniwersalne.
Patrząc na nie w kontekście drogi ludzkiego życia, dostrzegam bardzo bolesną prawdę. Droga wymaga wysiłku, który idzie na marne. Jakkolwiek dobrze by nam nie było po zmianie, pozostanie strata, coś w rodzaju rany, której nie uleczymy, lecz możemy jedynie nauczyć się z nią żyć.

[Maria Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best collection of essays I've read this year. I may not be an exile, or I may have had the experience of an expat (for 100 days at the most), but Eva Hoffman's insights hit me. How the ancient belief of [being uprooted] treated as a taboo, to contemporaries turning it as a [sexy] and romantic thought.

Alienation hits us when we travel. But as travelers, we have the choice to treat it as a hostile emotion, or own it as a liberating feeling.

[Christopher Louderback · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A poet is a member of that minority that refuses to be of any official minority, because a poet knows what it is to belong among those walking in broad daylight, as well as among those hiding behind closed shutters."

- Charles Simic, Refugees from Letters of Transit

[Andy Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some more interesting than others but I disliked some of the essays because it seemed like the authors were trying to use extreme, rarely-used vocabulary which made their messages to sophisticated. Maybe they couldn't help themselves.

The essay by Simic was my favorite.

[Tor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simic has a great piece in this. Good closing for the collection.

[Zamira Izzetgil]

I would like to read this book and then write review.

[Fsally · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only read Andre’ Aciman’s essay ‘Shadow Cities’ and I think I need a minute to recover.

[Sara Milligan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Made it most of the way through the essays here. Lots of neat reflections on language, accents, and nostalgia after misplacement from missed places.

[Edward Ferrari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Won't be able to do without the essays by Eva Hoffman, Said, and Simic. Can genuinely say I wish I hadn't read the first, or the introduction. Far too high falutin for me. Three mentioned pretty sound perspectives on the subject of exile, the Said more academic as you'd expect, the Hoffman journalistic (in a good way) and the Simic as down to earth.

[Sarah Niebuhr Rubin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tremendous essays about the experience of exile. Although the book is older, and at least one of the essayists argues that exile is not what t was in the days before it became common and easy to move around the world and communications became simple through technology, all five essays have something to teach us about new exiles, and about our own experiences even if we don't live in exile.

[Michael Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

I at the very least have to credit this book with introducing be to Edward Said.

[Laura Obscura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This group of essays is interesting to someone like me, who has moved around her whole life and continues to struggle with the concept of "home." Interesting read for thoughtful travellers.

[Maria Elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

very interesting concepts, especially that of Edward Said's essay. I felt very moved and sympathetic to that particular one because it reflected exactly what I feel at this point in my life

[caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

a mixed bag. some really good stuff; some pretty unexciting.

[Tatyana]

Particularly appreciated Simic's essay.