Writing & Literature
JAMES BERRELL
2023
My writing is a study of migration, movement, and belonging that explores the mobility of place and status. As a white immigrant with biracial children, my work asks questions about identity. How is acceptance achieved? How do internal and external perceptions contribute to our identity? What other forces do identities depend upon? My move from a working- class Manchester estate to middle-class Viennese city life leaves me with questions about class and social mobility. What does it mean to belong to a certain class and what factors determine it? How much depends upon self- identification, and how much upon cultural capital? Probing these topics through the mediums of performance poetry and prose, I use music and language to highlight issues commonly associated with diaspora. My ideas on identity are developed by combining my native Manchester tongue with characters based in both the UK and mainland Europe. The multimedia form my work occupies becomes a bridge between the internal and external, questioning perception and identification through both lenses.