Language, Person, and Place: Echoes of Religion in Minority Literatures

Abstract

Minority literature, whether produced by prominent authors writing in marginalized languages or marginalized authors writing in dominant languages, raises questions of human identity and alienation, human location and dislocation, which resonate with characteristically religious strategies for negotiating what it means to be a human being in a human place. This essay suggests that we can find traces of “religious” themes in
the work of authors of minority literature who operate on the margins and at the creative intersections between the living and the dead, between home and diaspora, and between singular and multiple realms of meaning.

Journal for the Study of Religion Vol. 19 (2) 2006: pp. 5-16