Re-placing the Accent: From the Exile to Refugee Position

This essay calls attention to the political potential of the refugee position and articulates a poetics of refugee aesthetic form. The piece tracks the development of a new refugee style, which consists of three main characteristics, where authors 1) respond to the demand to explain one’s presence; 2) gesture towards social identities; and 3) articulate a future for all refugee communities that acknowledges the lasting qualities engendered by the refugee experience. In order to map the relationship between the refugee position and literary style, I first turn to the work of Edward Said to discern the intellectual displacement and critical disposition that characterizes the writing of the refugee’s aesthetic predecessor: the exile. From there, I discuss how a group of Southeast Asian American authors “re-place” and accent this voice through works that forcefully articulate the refugees’ unwavering position in the “new” country. I conclude by surveying the aesthetic strategies Southeast Asian American authors use to combat a seemingly never-ending stream of uninformed readers who are unaware of the colonial and cultural histories that produce forced dislocation and refugee life.