Bok, bröd och minnessten - kontinuitet och förändring genom och bortom det etniska minnet

Abstract

Young people from multi-ethnic communities live in close and constant contact with multi-cultural aspects of everyday life. Diverse eultural elements clash, intersect and mingle och new identities are created. Behind the individual life stories of three young women retold in this artiele there is a common pattern. To a great extent young people with an immigrant background seem to strive towards a recreating and identifying a place of origin and to estahlish a connection between then and now which is closely related to the need for a sense of belonging. Recurring themes in their life stories are attempts to "go home" and to "make home from home" to qnote Phil Cohen. First there is usually what Boelhower calls a "catastrophic act of topological dislocation," then the journey, the lost home, a new start etc. Then comes a sort of deconstruction, often in connection with tension and friction between members of different generations. The third step includes some kind of reconcilitation; continutity and change through reconstruction. Does this mean the dissolution of everything which is specific in an ethnic sense? This artide argues that instead a sort of life poetry of continuity appears. The reconstruction of the ethnic memory och the revised recreaction are intertwined, thns emphasizing the great potential of as well as the great need for a transcultural society.