Narratives of Displacement: On Embodied Experience of Migration in Ulitskaya, Lindén, and Palei

Abstract

Abstract This essay discusses representations of migrant experiences of displacement by Russian women writers Liudmila Ulitskaya, Zinaida Lindén, and Marina Palei. The theoretical approach is guided by feminist geography and narrative studies, with attention to the conceptualization of space and place through embodied everyday experiences. The authors represent different writerly positions with which today’s Russophone writers engage, including multilingual and multilocal trends in and outside post-Soviet Russia. Although Lindén and Palei reside outside and Ulitskaya in Russia, their texts address (post-)Soviet migration and displacement, bringing critical perspectives both to their new home countries and to their homeland, Russia. In each text literary figures question and/or oppose the colonizing histories of their homeland and rewrite their personal stories in the form of narratives of displacement.