ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief and necessarily selective overview of diasporic literature, with a focus on written texts from different times, places and traditions, including fiction, autobiography, poetry, sacred texts and scholarship. It highlights their remarkable diversity, and two important common elements: their close relationship with the socio-economic situation of diasporic communities, and their important role as a cultural resource in the negotiation of such situations. The chapter shows that whether members of the diasporas write primarily for audiences in their home countries or cultures, their host countries, or fellow diasporans, their writing is of interest to us. It details family resemblances and common themes among different kinds of diasporic writing. The political effects of diasporic writing can cut in numerous directions, depending on the authors' attitudes both to their homeland and their host society, and the primary audience they have in mind.
