"Between a Life Lived and a Life Imagined - Elsewhere": The Figure of Home in Contemporary Polish-Canadian Literature

Abstract

"The anthology Polish(ed): Poland Rooted in Canadian Fiction, edited by Kasia Jaronczyk and Małgorzata Nowaczyk, has contributed to
the visibility of Polish migration in Canada and showed the writers’ creativity and desire to share their unique voices with the Canadian audience. In her foreword to the anthology, Magda Stroińska discusses how identity and the concept of home are redefined in the challenging process of migration. In this context, the first and, so far, only anthology of texts written by Polish-Canadians delves into the question of transnational identities seen as 'palimpsest.' Migrants and exiles forming their concept of home and expressing their ideas in writing have tackled many different aspects of this phenomenon, such as (un)belonging, language, history, and ethnicity, among others. The aim of this article is to delineate select themes and tendencies in recent Polish-Canadian writing on the basis of the short stories included in Polish(ed): Poland Rooted in Canadian Fiction, to examine the multifaceted figure of home as well as the transnational challenges of writing diasporic literature."