Identity, migration, and assimilation in Nadine Gordimer’s the pickup

Abstract EN

Twenty years after the publication of Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup (2001), thousands of migrants from Arab and other Muslim countries uselessly knocked at the gates of Europe in the search of a better life.

At a different and less global level, Gordimer’s text investigates the condition of those forced to immigrate.

While it is detached from apartheid, or revisiting such a crucial theme, the author found herself having to choose topics to be privileged to narratively express the impact of the historical, ideological, and personal evolutions of the last decade.

The identity aspect of migration is linked to its physical part, for there is a connection with a form of representation.

The idea of the word as a powerful means of expression is enriched by the language’s multiple and constantly varied characteristics.

English and Arabic are placed on an equivalent level of ontological validity.

The individual and the social stabilization that indicate a sort of completeness seems achievable through a dynamic and productive comparison.