(In)hospitable Narratives: Language Depropriation and Writing in Oona Frawley’s Flight

Set in Ireland 2004, against the backdrop of anti-immigrant sentiment that preceded Citizenship Referendum, Flight, by Oona Frawley weaves story Sandrine—a young Zimbabwean woman who flies her country search a better future for herself and family—into Tom Claire, an old Irish couple whom she works as carer. The novel engages directly with representations migration hospitality contemporary examining complex ways which political dimensions intersect both linguistic aesthetic paradigms. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s Monolingualism Other or Prosthesis Origin (Stanford, 1998) well scholarly criticism has scrutinised politics aesthetics monolingualism, this chapter aims at exploring Frawley’s Flight challenges modern notion “mother tongue” family romance. To model based assumption language is form property, intimately connected to kinship motherhood, seems suggest new modes writing reading explore depropriation strategy overcome hostile barriers build communities.