Introduction

Transnational Identities 343
ences the other storylines. 45 Having lost her home and her family she tries to
imagine them in the space of the novel in which she is constantly linked to and
connected with them across geographical and temporal distances. The novel can
then be seen as her imagined world. However, even this conclusion is by no
means certain since, after all, Anna also in a striking passage reflects upon a story
of how one twin can absorb another in the womb: “And perhaps this is the story
of twinship. I have smuggled myself away from who I was, and what I was. But
am I the living twin in the story of our family? Or is it Claire? Who is the stilled
one?” (D 141).
The only thing that can be said with certainty about Divisadero is that it is filled
with uncertainty. Meaning is always open and infinite as everything in the novel
seems interconnected. The longer one tries to separate the different parts, the
closer they stick together. In the space of the novel all boundaries are blurred and
everything is part of the other. This might make it a “stubbornly eclectic” book, to
quote Maslin again, but it also makes it a rather fitting illustration of the transnational
condition as ‘Anna’ certainly seems to simultaneously take part in all the
different parts of the book.
6. Conclusion
Michael Ondaatje’s fiction and transnational conceptions of space appear to suit
one another rather well when it comes to the depiction of characters’ identities.
Ondaatje’s description of the spaces of identity in which different nations and
cultures are joined in boundary-transgressing unity precisely echoes transnationalism’s
perspective on the simultaneous experience of here and there of transnational
lives.
Nevertheless, Ondaatje’s works do not only accentuate the positive experiences
of transnational identities but also address their difficulties, such as the
problem of different belief systems – for example in Anil’s Ghost – which suppress
the successful formation of transnational identities. Touching upon a similar concern,
the rejection of migrants in the country of immigration is a topic in The English
Patient. The texts can therefore not be seen as a simple celebration of multicultural
or postnational ways of life, but reflect the challenges many contemporary
migrants are faced with in a nuanced way: all stories are marked by a strong desire
to unite spaces and transcend boundaries, no matter how successful they are in
achieving it and thus seem to echo contemporary forms of life and identities
45 Since already near the beginning some form of omniscience and all-encompassing presence is
associated with, or better self-attributed to Anna (D 27), it would not be surprising to take up
this perspective again while speculating about the lives of those she lost. She certainly thinks she
“can imagine most things about Claire accurately” (D 139) even though she has not seen her in
almost 20 years.