Writers In Between Languages: Minority Literatures in the Global Scene

edited by Mari Jose Olaziregi “All authors who write in a minority language at some point find themselves struggling to answer a basic question: Why do you do what you do? Why do you write in a language that few understand, instead of choosing any one of those occupying a central orbit in the solar system of languages?” —Bernardo Atxaga, from “The Cork and the Anchor” This book is a collection of the contributions made by Basque writers and American and European academics to the international symposium, “Writers In Between Languages: Minority Literatures in the Global Scene,” held May 15–17, 2008 at the Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, Reno, in the United States. Our symposium attempted to think about the consequences of bilingualism for writers in a minority language, like Basque, in that they are located in that “in-between” of different cultural and identity communities and subjected to constant exchange and recognition of differences. One could say that practically