Writing oneself into existence: Four literary artists and their perspectives on exile

The purpose of this study is to offer a more precise meaning for the concept of exile. The field of Exile as an academic discipline and the scholarly community itself, fail to adequately define Exile. In this study issues with the field of Exilic Studies will be examined and in order to gain a more precise definition for exile, exilic narratives will be analyzed. The better defining of exile will be accomplished through a careful study of the exilic experiences and personal narratives of Hanna Arendt, Max Aub, Suheir Hammad, and Natsume Soseki. It is this study’s contention that exile has been poorly defined, and any effort to better define it ought to include the work of literary artists.