Traveling through Memories, Space, and Time in Narratives on Migration from the Balkans

• In Event: Yugoslav Configurations II: Warped Time in the Balkans

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that migration experiences distort the perception of time, as well as that they affect how memories reappear in the minds of literary characters in the narratives on migration. Ruptures are caused by numerous aspects: Frequent changes of places where the characters live, their experiences with immigration authorities and other state institutions, the encounters with poverty and exclusion, and by navigating new languages and cultures. These ruptures produce a splitting of the worlds and timelines literary characters inhabit in two novels on the migration experiences of women from the Balkans – Superheroines (Superheldinnen 2016) by Barbi Marković and The Hand That You Do Not Bite (La mano che non mordi 2007) by Ornela Vorpsi. In both novels, the past is vividly present and affects the characters' lives, especially through childhood memories or memories of life before migration. To change the future, one must change the past – in Superheroines, three main characters have inherited from a previous generation of women dark superpowers that could change the course of history, while in Orpsi’s novel, the main character invokes her mother’s childhood memories with an urge to intervene in her mother’s past. I am interested in an interplay between migration and memory and its effects on the splitting of space and time – in Marković’s novel, time splits into “time for magic” and “the rest of time,” while in Orpsi’s novel, migrant life becomes the life outside, in front of the closed door, in another world.

Author

• Tamara Cvetković, Central European U (Austria)