Rejection of Victimhood in Literature

This book builds on existing scholarship by leading theorists to offer an in-depth examination of an intriguing selection of writers. It explores how works by Abdulrazak Gurnah, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Luis Alberto Urrea represent a recalibration of how stories about marginalised migrants in the US and the UK are told - stories about their rights, their suffering, and their relationships to the citizens around them that reject victimhood and embrace just memories. The selected works reject and counter descriptions of the marginalised that are framed in terms of victimhood and passivity. As an alternative, they emphasise the need for just memories and narratives that not only accept personal agency, but also afford their characters opportunities to exercise power and control over their own lives and destinies, no matter how limited these may be.