This project examines narratives of transplanted identity-building and memory in European languages by second-generation non-European writers who choose to write their stories in European languages. The dissertation focuses on three books: La colline aux oliviers by Mehdi Lallaoui, a “Beur” (French Algerian) writer, White Teeth by British Caribbean Zadie Smith and Lipstick Jihad by Do-rageh/Iranian American Azadeh Moaveni. I argue that these three narratives use the language and memory sites of the host countries. They claim these as their own in order to recuperate events removed from historical memory by the violence of colonialism and the disruptive tide of exile and immigration. Because these children of immigrants are born and raised in the host country, they occupy a privileged position of being in-between that enables them to undertake reconciliatory mediation and assert the relevance of the colonized and imperialized experience for all its inheritors, both former colonizers and former colonized. Multiple choices eclipse the sense of dead end and rejection that characterizes literature of exile and colonization. To discuss these choices, I use Edward W. Said's concepts of filiation and affiliation. Filiation implicates the culture inherited from the parents of second-generation characters whereas affiliation points to the place of birth and upbringing. Filiation and affiliation can be seen as contradictory and antagonistic, however I choose to use these terms as complementary and reconciliatory. If previous scholars consider second-generation immigrant narratives to reproduce the sense of displacement and bitterness experienced by their parents, I propose to examine how concepts such as Maurice Halbwachs'collective memory nevertheless occupy a positive strength in the second-generation immigrant narratives where memory and reconciliation are reclaimed. / text

Built in 1819 by the U.S. government, Fort Snelling sits at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. This place is called a “bdote” by the Dakota people. Oral traditions describe bdote as the site of Dakota creation. Treaties in the nineteenth century allowed the U.S. government to dispossess the Dakota of this land. Fort Snelling is connected to many important points in U.S. history. It operated as a military post until the mid-twentieth century, and was a training or processing site for U.S. servicepersons who fought in the Civil War, U.S. Indian removal campaigns, and World War Two, among others. Dred Scott lived as a slave at Fort Snelling. Following the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, about 1,600 Dakota people were forcibly concentrated below Fort Snelling, where nearly 300 died. Shortly after, the U.S. government banished the Dakota from Minnesota. Today, Fort Snelling exists as “Historic Fort Snelling.” Run by the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS), the site offers a living history program which interprets Fort Snelling “as it was” in the 1820s—before much of these events of import occurred. This portrayal is geared toward schoolchildren and white Minnesotans, and focuses on the premise of peaceful U.S. settlement in the American West. This study describes Fort Snelling’s history, and address peoples’—both Dakota and other Minnesotans’—objections to the circumscribed interpretation of history at Historic Fort Snelling. By better revealing the memory alive at this site, most specifically the popularly ignored Dakota memories of Fort Snelling and bdote, this study hopes to convey what scholar Avery F. Gordon would term the “hauntings” present but unacknowledged at Historic Fort Snelling. This study concludes that in order to express the density of memory at Fort Snelling, MHS and Historic Fort Snelling must acknowledge that the Dakota people and their stories are crucial to its history. Further, these institutions must recognize that oppressive structures like U.S. colonialism allowed for Fort Snelling’s creation and operation. These structures and the hauntings they produce are still alive on this land, and onsite historical interpretation at Historic Fort Snelling must transform to reflect these living memories. / text