Introduction

282
Sonja Lehmann
nity in Italy at the end of World War II, but has a quite different understanding of
identity and belonging. Finally, Anna, the central character of Divisadero, sees her
life as a network that surpasses the boundaries between nations, characters, fiction
and reality, and even time. As a result “[e]verything is collage” (Divisadero 16), even
Anna’s identity, as she imagines herself to belong to and identifies with all the
different story lines in the novel.
While all these texts differ greatly in plot and setting they nevertheless depict a
set of characters whose identities are equally influenced by multiple affiliations and
affinities that cut across national and cultural boundaries. Even though Ondaatje’s
fiction stresses that such identities are not always easy to live with, especially in
conditions where one’s environment does not welcome them, there is still almost
always some sense of reconciliation in the texts which makes simultaneously taking
part in several cultures and nations seem possible. The sense of loss and displacement
that all characters at one point feel as a result of their migrations mostly
gives way to at least a little hope for a more positive and empowering sense of
belonging to several places.
This sets Ondaatje’s fiction apart from other forms of postcolonial migrant
writing which often emphasizes the displacement and in-betweenness of migrants.
Accordingly, Pico Iyer states, “Ondaatje is harder to place than many of his fellow
exile writers, and there is always a sense in his books that he is trying to create a
new kind of mongrel fiction that leaves old categories behind” (“Mongrel Fiction”
no pag.). Iyer presents an interesting hypothesis here that I will attempt to answer
with my thesis: whether Ondaatje’s fiction is a new kind of migrant writing that
requires a different theoretical approach compared to more traditional migrant
literature.
The topic of transnational identities is ideal for this endeavour since transnational
migration is a rather new phenomenon that is not well established in theories
of postcolonial migrant writing yet. However, transnational theories appear
very apt to describe the workings of Ondaatje’s fiction since they emphasize simultaneity,
the dissolution of boundaries and the importance of spaces in the
formation of transnational identities. All these aspects can repeatedly be found in
Ondaatje’s writings as my brief introduction to the works to be analyzed in this
study has already shown.
I will therefore at first summarize how identity is dealt with in postcolonial
theory and compare this to sociological and anthropological studies on transnational
migration in order to propose a theory on the formation of transnational
identities and analyze Ondaatje’s fiction in terms of this. This should not only
prove useful for an analysis of the treatment of identities in Ondaatje’s works but
also point out how cultural globalization has affected the kind of literature that is
produced in our times.