This volume combines literary analysis and theoretical approaches to mobility, diasporic identities and the construction of space to explore the different ways in which the notion of return shapes contemporary ethnic writing such as fiction, ethnography, memoir, and film. Through a wide variety of ethnic experiences ranging from the Transatlantic, Asian American, Latino/a and Caribbean alongside their corresponding forms of displacement - political exile, war trauma, and economic migration - the essays in this collection connect the intimate experience of the returning subject to multiple locations, historical experiences, inter-subjective relations, and cultural interactions.

Introduction: Roots and Routes in American Literature about Return Maria Antònia Oliver-Rotger Part I: Return as Memory Reconstructed 1. Migration, Exclusion, and "Home" in Edwidge Danticat's Narratives of Return Valerie Kaussen 2. Between Home and Loss: Inscribing Return in Ruth Behar's An Island Called Home Rocio G. Davis 3. Nightmares from My Parents: Return as Recovery in Doan Hòang's Oh, Saigon Aitor Ibarrola-Armendariz Part II: Restorative Nostalgias: Return as Emotional Re-Attachment 4. Andrew Lam's Narratives of Return: From Viet Kieu Nostalgia to Discrepant Cosmopolitanisms Begoña Simal González 5. Returning Home: Iranian-American Women's Memoirs and Reflective Nostalgia Persis Karim 6. Enacting an Identity by Re-Creating a Home: Eleni Gage's North of Ithaka Eleftheria Arapoglou 7. El vaivén de la vida: Musings on Deterritorialized Border Subjects Norma E. Cantú Part III: Impossible Returns 8. Cuban Geographies: The Roots/Routes of Ana Menéndez Narratives Ada Ortuzar-Young 9. "The Inextinguishable Longings for Elsewheres": The Impossibility of Return in Junot Díaz Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez 10. Returning to Places of No Return in the Stuart Dybek's Short Stories Tamas Dobozy