The Writer and the Overseas Childhood

What does Ian McEwan have in common with Barbara Kingsolver? Or The Shack’s William Paul Young with The Way the Crow Flies’ Ann-Marie MacDonald? All four spent significant portions of their formative years overseas as expatriates; all four are third culture kids. These authors share experiences of cultural and geographical displacement that fracture constructions of home and identity, as their fiction attests. This study surveys 17 authors with “expat” backgrounds to define “third culture literature,” a burgeoning yet unrecognized branch of international writing characterized by expressions of dislocation, loss, and disenfranchisement. By explicating how the shared cultural details of these writers emerge in literary themes and images, this work introduces third culture literature as a separate field, reinterpreting the work of major writers from across the globe.

Antje M. Rauwerda is an associate professor of British and Postcolonial Literature at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland.

Antje M. Rauwerda
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 203
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2012
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4900-2
eISBN: 978-0-7864-9106-3
Imprint: McFarland

Table of Contents


Acknowledgments viii

Preface 1

Introduction: When Writers Grow Up Expat 7

One—Third Culture Reading 27

Two—Adult Situations and Secret Perversions in the Writings of Former Military Brats 62

Three—When Your Parents Work for God: The Fiction Writing of Former Missionary Kids 116

Conclusion: Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible as Third Culture Literature 157

Chapter Notes 179

Works Cited 182

Index 189