HISTORICAL CULTURE AND IMMIGRATION, OR HOW TO REMEMBER AND HOW TO FORGET OUR IMMIGRANT PASTS

A Forgetful Nation: On Immigration and Cultural Identity in the United States. By Ali Behdad. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. xvii + 212 pp. Photos, notes, bibliography, and index. $74.95 (cloth); $21.95 (paper).

Diaspora, Memory, and Identity: A Search for Home. Edited by Vijay Agnew. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 2005. x + 308 pp. Notes and bibliography. $65.00 (cloth); $29.95 (paper).

Ioanna Laliotou
University of Thessaly at Volos, Greece

These two books examine how the history of human mobility has contributed to the formation of contemporary subjectivity and culture in the United States and Canada. Although this is a very traditional topic in the fields of immigration history and diaspora studies, both offer fresh perspectives by combining various disciplinary approaches to back up with research some of the most central insights of post-colonial and cultural studies theories. Their shared starting point is the importance of memory and oblivion for the production of political identities and national narratives. Diaspora, Memory, and Identity explores cultural memory through immigrants' ways of remembering and representing their ethnic past and heritage. A Forgetful Nation analyses how memory informs American nationalism by elaborating the myth that the United States is a hospitable nation of immigrants.