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This article examines literatures written largely within the last three years by poets Kazim Ali, Fatimah Asghar, and Tarfia Faizullah. It illustrates how Muslim second-generation immigrant writers construct figurative homelands that reclaim or reject their Western/ancestral identities by interrogating "them" versus "us" binaries and/or crafting notions of the "we" on which they belong. This research is guided by studies on the perceptions and mis-recognitions of Muslims since 11 September 2001 by Sadia Abbas, Naseem L. Aumeerally, and Arjun Appadurai. Overall, it examines the profound impact of 9/11 on Muslim second-generation immigrants' sense of homeland, belonging, and security in America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The case of Sri Lanka and the Tamil diaspora can be cited as a classic case of participation by a diaspora in the homeland conflict and to some extent also in conflict resolution. Influenced by lived experiences of discrimination and suffering in an ethnocentric homeland and a range of racial prejudices and economic deprivation, in the host lands, the diaspora Tamils developed a strong sense of Tamil identity and ethno-nationalism which the LTTE could successfully harvest on. However, with the devastating civil war coming to an end, and a new government in power, numerous opportunities have opened up for diaspora participation in the development and reconstruction of the war-torn regions. All that is required is a pragmatic and reconciliatory approach by both sides – by the diaspora as well as by the Sri Lankan state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ever since Lord Durham's famous sentence concerning the French Canadians -- "They are people with no history and no literature" -- there has been a never-ending questioning about the origin, the genesis and the value of literature called Franco-Canadian or Québécoise. Be it James Huston's Répertoire national or the project Archéologie du littéraire initiated by Bernard Andrès -- this interrogation is a characteristic invariant of a great part of the literary criticism in Quebec which seeks to define the place and specificity of its literature in correlation to the surrounding or determinating forces in order to represent a collective identity. In the present article, different critical attitudes towards the literary field of Quebec with its long history will be identified and analysed by taking into account different criteria of canonization. The perception by Quebecois criticism of its own literature, its origins and evolution will be examined as well as the perception of this literature by others. This will lead to a better understanding of the ideological, axiological and aesthetic presuppositions which underlie the critical discourse in Quebec and to a better understanding of the problematics of the concept of "national literature" within the diversity of literatures in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]