Own-Other Space: Play with the Concept in British and American Cross-Cultural Fiction

Abstract

The paper deals with the novels and short stories of multicultural writers, descents of immigrants from different countries but born and bred on the territories of Great Britain and the USA. Their literary works can be also related to cross-cultural fiction due to the national and cultural heterogeneity and reciprocity depicted in the narration. It is important to say that interaction and interpenetration of several histories, traditions, customs and cultures lies in the basis of any cross-cultural text. Therefore, the concept of OWN-OTHER is claimed to be one of the most important for both authors under study and characters they create, as hybridity, being a key characteristic of contemporary multicultural situation, leads to an erasure of borders between the so-called <em>own</em> and <em>alien</em>. The crucial point of the research undertaken is to analyze how contemporary cross-cultural writers play with the concept of OWN-OTHER in regard to the category of space and its significance in connection with the personages' self-identification and acculturation.