Author Marie-Celie Agnant To Lecture At Muhlenberg College
Marie-Celie Agnant, a Haitian-born author whose observations are based largely on the relationships between language, migration, and identity , will lecture at Muhlenberg College as a part of the series, The Ethics and Politics of Identity.Tuesday, March 21, 2006 01:59 PM
Agnant’s talk, “Language, Identity, and Migration,” will be held on March 27 at 7 p.m. in the Recital Hall, Center for the Arts. This event is free and open to the public.
According to Agnant, "migrant literature" has been “agitating the literary scene” in Canada for much of the 20th century. Migrant writing, she explains, is a sort of “literary and social experiment” in which writers from marginalized groups struggle to find their own voices and identities in a new land, reconciling the past and the present. Migrant literature is often seen as its own genre—the roman du terroir, or literature of the homeland. Mme Agnant also called migrant writing a “literature of survival,” meant to preserve immigrants’ traditions, religions, and histories.
Agnant was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and has lived in Montreal for the past thirty years. She has published two novels, La Dot de Sara (1995, finalist for the Prix Desjardins) and Le Livre d'Emma (2001), as well as several books for young readers, a volume of poetry, and a collection of short stories, Le Silence comme le sang (1997, finalist for the Prix du Gouverneur général). Her latest novel, Emma’s Book, and a short story “The House Facing the Sea,” will be available in English this spring.
The Ethics and Politics of Identity is a year long series of programs, sponsored by the Muhlenberg College Center for Ethics , about the ethical challenges that surround the changing categories of social, national, and global identities.
For more information on the series, or to view the schedule of events for the spring semester, please visit: www.muhlenberg.edu/cultural/ethics.
