Dinaw Mengestu's reading at the Seattle Public Library last night was excellent. I did feel a little bad for him as the lecture hall was only half full but it was raining pretty steadily yesterday evening. I figured that the hall would be packed as it was part of the free lecture series and Mengestu's first two books are so good. Sure he might not be a living room name but I was sure that people would be lined up to see him.

I rounded up my sister and our friend B. to go with me. The lecture started at 7pm and I met them for drinks about 5:30 at Purple Cafe and Wine Bar at 4th and University. It's a big space but when I got there at 5:25 or so all of the tables were taken or reserved. So I ended up at the upstairs bar. This turned out to be just perfect because I was able to chat with the bartender about wine and sample some wines I've never had before from Spain, Portugal and Italy. It was an especially happy hour for me!

The reading was co-hosted by the library and by a local bookstore so I had an opportunity to buy Mengestu's new book, <a title="Goodreads and All Our Names" href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18050096-all-our-names" target="_blank">All Our Names</a>, beforehand. I'd read a little bit about the new book before the lecture but I hadn't read the book. It seems like <a title="NYT on All Our Names" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/books/review/all-our-names-by-dinaw-mengestu.html?_r=0" target="_blank">this NYT review </a>gets right to the heart of the matter: cultural exchange and the pieces of ourselves that we trade in or bargain away to make this happen and the violence of this loss (or of this exchange) whether physical or internalized.

I did not take notes at the reading so what I am writing now is from memory. There were three things that stood out to me during the reading and Q&amp;A. First, is Mengestu's resistance to being called or a labeled an immigrant writer. Second, is the complicated role of language in the excerpt that he read from. Third, is the issue of privilege and being an expat versus an immigrant.<!--more-->

In my post yesterday, I said that I'd found myself <a title="Reading list: books on the immigrant experience" href="http://carolynemigh.com/seattle-public-libary-dinaw-mengestu-books-on-the-immigrant-experience/" target="_blank">devouring books on the immigrant experience</a> and I counted Mengestu's works among these books. Would I have called him an immigrant author yesterday? Maybe, maybe not. His biography makes it pretty clear that his is a life lived in America--he grew up here and his writing is full of cultural and linguistic markers that mark him as American.

But at the reading, Mengestu pushed against the label: immigrant writer. He resisted this saying that we are all immigrant writers, well, aside from Sherman Alexie. But the point was this, by labeling others as immigrant writers we, the label-ers, are solidifying our position as dominate, our narrative as mainstream and the experiences of the immigrant writers as other, as marginalized, as exotic. Of course to add to this, there is no single immigrant experience which makes the label rather meaningless anyway.

I've been interested in the "immigrant experience" in literature as a way to make sense of my own experience living abroad for five years in Bulgaria and the complicated issue of return. I am at home but in many ways this place is now foreign to me. At times, it's messy and lonely to be at home but not to feel at home.

Another idea that Mengestu addressed in his reading was that of language. Mengestu read from a chapter in which Isaac, the exchange student, lets Helen, the social worker, speak for him. She asks about stamps at the post office for him and orders his meal for him in a diner but when it comes to standing up for himself in English, he does this. This is a complicated issue. Is Helen actually helping Isaac by speaking for him? Why does he let her do this? What kind of dependency do we form by letting others speak for us?

I know firsthand how much easier it is to let someone else order your meal or your beer in a foreign country but you also hand a little piece of yourself over to them. You lose a little bit of agency--the waiter stops looking at you and asking you questions. It becomes infantilizing. Does she want another beer? The waiter will ask your friend/colleague/boyfriend as you sit there being discussed in the third person.

Finally there is the question of what makes one an expat versus an immigrant. In the Q&amp;A, I asked Mengestu about this issue of language and he told me that he'd written All Our Names while living in for five years in France and that he'd found himself living in a language without speaking it. (I thought, me too! I know what that feels like.) The he said that those of us with American passports are always expats abroad and never immigrants and I think that's true. As Americans abroad, we always have the ability to return and outside of the States given the myth of America no one imagines that we are immigrants. This is a privileged place to find one's self.

The final question of the night was this: what are you currently reading? The answer: <a title="Everyday is for the Thief &amp; Goodreads" href="http://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&amp;query=Every+Day+is+for+the+Thief+" target="_blank">Every Day is for the Thief </a>by Teju Cole. Mengestu also mentioned that he is a re-reader and referenced <a title="Goodreads and Housekeeping" href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11741.Housekeeping" target="_blank">Housekeeping </a>by Marilynne Summers Robinson and this book <a title="Goodreads and Season of Migration to the North" href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/669780.Season_of_Migration_to_the_North?from_search=true" target="_blank">Season of Migration to the North</a> by Tayeb Salih.

It probably goes without saying, but I am really looking forward to reading All Our Names!