Weibliche Migration im albanischen Prisma - Die Romane von Elvira Dones und Ornela Vorpsi
Female Migration in the Albanian Prism - The Novels of Elvira Dones and Ornela Vorpsi

Summary/Abstract: Ornela Vorpsi and Elvira Dones are two quite different Albanian authors. Although both of them left the Balkans in 1988 and 1991 and share the fate of being transnational writers in the West, having shifted their writing language to Italian and French, respectively, they have developed different styles of writing: Vorpsi reckons with her childhood trauma of sexual harassment and abuse by writing autobiographical novels on female protagonists. Dones, on her part, combines her migration experience with investigative journalism and chooses political topics such as the Kosovo War in 1998 – 1999 or human trafficking of the Albanian mafia in Italy in the 1990s. What Vorpsi and Dones have in common is their female perspective on emancipation and empowerment processes. Both write about female liberation from constraints and male oppression in the old homeland. It would be desirable to have both authors translated into Albanian in order to trigger a recanonisation of Albanian literature which until today is prevented by the strong elite continuity in Albania. The pace of these female authors leaving behind their marginal position in society and in a male literary canon is remarkable.

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