Bangkok Bound

With the acceleration of global migration, literature by migrant writers has emerged as a powerful medium for describing the ways in which global forces are experienced at the personal level. Migrant literature offers a compelling counter-narrative to abstract visions of globalization, grounding large-scale processes in real-life stories of individuals.

In Thailand, migrant writers have documented the social and cultural impacts of fifty years of rural-urban migration through hundreds of stories, poems, and novels. Bangkok Bound is the first book to examine this body of literature and to distill the messages conveyed by Thai migrant writers about their experiences. These stories powerfully describe the ways in which migrants who leave their homes bound for Bangkok are quickly bound to Bangkok through the transformative force of modern city life. And they show the ways in which those who remain behind in the village are transformed, too, as they struggle to maintain a rural way of life in a rapidly urbanizing world.

Bangkok Bound is a welcome addition to the fields of migration studies and urban studies. It will appeal to students and scholars of Thailand and Thai literature.

Ellen Boccuzzi is a Foreign Service Officer with USAID.

"An engaging and authoritative study of literary representations of migration from the provinces to Bangkok based on a wide reading of short stories written over the last four decades and interviews with major writers and critics. It will be of interest not only to students of literature, but also to anyone interested in social change in Thailand in the late twentieth century." -David Smyth, SOAS, University of London