AustLit

'The migrant's presence in one place is always an absence from another. To capture this ambivalence, narratives of migration must oscillate between different locations. This paper is interested in the ways in which other-worlds either left or never reached by the migrant are discursively fenced off, as it were, against the remaining part of the tale of travelling to sustain not only a sense of movement beyond the suggested moments of arrival but also the hope by which this movement has been prompted. I will focus on three short stories describing three different stages in the drama of migration: "Leaving" by M. G. Vassanji, "Mammita's Garden Cove" by Cyril Dabydeen, and "After Long Absence" by Janette Turner Hospital.' Helga Ramsey-Kurz.