Nationality best practices

The new charts and graphs got me filling in Nationality for some of my authors who were missing it, and sure enough I quickly ran into some arguable cases, specifically ones where an author was born in one country but did most of their writing in another.

Vera Efron, to take the first instance I ran across, is born in Soviet Russia but moved to Sweden at age thirty. All her books appear to have been originally published in Sweden and in Swedish. Should she be mapped to Russia or Sweden?

My first thought was Sweden - born and bread in Russia, and perhaps considers herself a Russian, but as an author she appears pretty unambiguously Swedish.

Then I was brought up short by noticing that Isaac Asimov is mapped to Russia, which country he left at the age of three. But this may not be so much somebody's deliberate decision as an accidental consequence of that his brith nationality is listed before his adoptive one, while the "country for map" field is empty, in which case the mapping evidently goes by the first nationality listed.

Would people agree that people like this ought be mapped to the country they did the most of their authoring in? Or should birth nationality trump everything? Or self-identification? That last is going to be hard to determine in many cases.

And if where they did their authoring is to go by, what to do with somebody like Karl Marx, who did plenty of authoring in multiple countries?

Other thoughts?

I'll throw out a thought: The country where they held citizenship the majority of the years between 10 and 40 years of age? Just a gut feeling definition. I think it will be very hard to arrive at a "sound scientific" definition.

The Common Knowledge field allows for multiple entries. Assuming it is technically possible, I would be in favor of including people under multiple nationalities in the listings under "Charts and Graphics" when relevant. Someone like Nabokov is claimed by both Russian and American literatures and it seems limiting to have to choose only one.

I've also been wondering how stringently the term "nationality" is being interpreted.
In the majority of cases "nationality" in the legal sense of "citizenship" is probably going to be unproblematic, but there is a non-negligible number of authors who are either a) associated closely with a country they may not be a citizen of or b) spent so little time in the country where they were born that birth citizenship hardly seems a relevant criteria.

Many countries - including the USA - allow double citizenship, so citizenship is not a clear criterium.

>3 spiphany:

Acc'd what Tim said in another thread, an author can only be mapped to one country for the map.

Re citizenship, authors may hold multiple ones or change over their lifetimes. Asimov was born a Russian citizen but became an American one in childhood, frex.

I find it funny to call Asimov Russian, given that he entered the US when he was three and never spoke Russian.

>6 prosfilaes: Language and nationality don't always match. There were many different languages in the USSR.

>4 MarthaJeanne: Yeah, I'm aware of that. But my point was about whether citizenship can be treated as a satisfactory criteria for determining what goes in the "nationality" field -- which seems to be how the CK field has generally been interpreted.

For the majority of cases using a person's citizenship (or one of their citizenships) is going to result in a nationality that seems reasonable, but there are enough exceptions to this that I'm reluctant to equate the two.

In other words, is it acceptable to list a country under "nationality" when an author has strong ties to it but is not a citizen? (say, Yoko Tawada, who is arguably at least as much a "German" author as a "Japanese" one)

Likewise, should we avoid listing birth citizenship under nationality if the author never spent much time in that country and this heritage does not play a role in their work? (e.g. Asimov)

>5 AndreasJ: I honestly don't find the map all that useful. But the list of authors by nationality displays different information than the map (i.e., it includes places that aren't current or independent states like "Roman empire", "USSR", and "Scotland"). So it doesn't seem impossible that there might be a way to represent author data such that a person can be included on the list multiple times. What I don't know is whether there is a technical limitation or whether it was a choice made when deciding how to display the data that could theoretically be changed.

>8 MarthaJeanne: True, but it's an indicator. A Russian-speaking New York immigrant may have considered themself Russian, but I don't think there were very many Yiddish-speaking New York immigrants who considered themselves Russian. Nationality, language and identity are tied up in complex ways.

In this case, I don't think Asimov ever considered himself Russian, and I'm certain he never considered himself Soviet.

Citizenship is a bright line, but for many authors it's hard to know.

>9 spiphany:

I don't see what possible purpose would be served by deliberately withholding or removing the information that Asimov was born in Russia. It's less relevant to his career than that he spent almost all his life in the US as an US citizen, but it's not irrelevant.

It seems strange to use it as his "primary" Nationality for the map and graph, though, so in his case adding USA as his Country (for map) seems like a good idea.

I would be surprised if its very hard to make an author appear multiple times in the lists. Whether it's a good idea is another question - the less the list corresponds to map and graph the more confusing, I'd think.

>9 spiphany: (say, Yoko Tawada, who is arguably at least as much a "German" author as a "Japanese" one)

If she's never taken German citizenship, I'd say no. I don't know how hard German citizenship is to get, but especially in a case like hers, it feels like a deliberate choice to be Japanese more than just because.

>11 AndreasJ: I don't see what possible purpose would be served by deliberately withholding or removing the information that Asimov was born in Russia.

I don't think that's on the table; it's going to be on the line for place of birth. But that's not necessarily nationality either; I'm an American born in Germany who has never been a German citizen.

It's perhaps worth quoting the advice for the Country (for map) field:

A currently existing, generally recognized country we can map against. This field is only necessary if the last entry in "Nationality" is not one. Country should be countries that can fairly and non-trivially "claim" the author as a citizen or resident.

So citizenship isn't meant to automatically trump residence. There's no advice, though, what to do when multiple countries would appear to have a fair and non-trivial claim to an author. I'd be happy to dismiss Russia's claim to Asimov as trivial, but from a brief look at her WP page it seems to me both Japan and Germany have reasonable claims to Yoko Tawada.

>13 prosfilaes:

I should have said "the information that Asimov was born a Russian citizen".

Asimov currently has two Nationalities listed, "Russia (birth)" and "USA (naturalized)". I don't see how it would help anyone to remove the former, and it's not strictly redundant with his birthplace being in Russia.

I agree that setting a "primary" nationality through the "Country (for map)" field is far preferable to removing data from a list of multiple nationalities.

Even if citizenship were the proper solution in a situation with perfect knowledge (and the above contains many good arguments as to why it isn't), I'd expect it to be less than workable in the actual world. For many authors, it may be common knowledge (lowercase) that an author was born in Country X and lives in Country Y. Information about their citizenship may be much less easily available.

>12 prosfilaes: Germany has fairly restrictive citizenship rules. It's only possible for immigrants to get German citizenship while retaining their birth citizenship under certain circumstances (for example, if one is a citizen of another EU state), and until recently citizenship was based on jus sanguinis (parents' citizenship) rather than jus soli (place of birth), which led to children of, for example, Turkish immigrants not having German citizenship even though they had spent their entire lives in Germany.

In other words, I don't know how Tawada sees herself, but there are lots of reasons why someone residing long-term in Germany might not have citizenship.

I would argue that it makes sense to consider her a "German" author (as well as a Japanese one) because in addition to living in Germany, she writes some of her books in German, her German-language titles often deal with topics related to German culture and life in Germany, and the reception of these titles has taken place within the context of German literature -- i.e., she has received a number of literary prizes which are awarded to German or German-language authors. (She's also received Japanese prizes, underlining my point that assuming a person only has one national/cultural identity is rather reductive and doesn't do justice to the fact that many writers do indeed see themselves as having multiple identifications.)

This is very different than a case of an author who might be living outside their country of origin but still remains rooted in the literature and context of that country. For example, I doubt anyone would suggest that Thomas Mann should be considered an American author even though he lived there for some time and even acquired US citizenship.

Personally I would go with
1) self-identification, if possible
2) publisher identification (e.g. if the blurb on the back of the book says "Soandso was a French writer..."
3) country most of the authoring was in and/or works were first published in
4) where they lived most of their life before or during authoring

Very very last on my list would be citizenship. Citizenship is when a state accepts a person, not the other way around.

>17 spiphany:, >18 norabelle414:

Citizenship is a bidirectional agreement; the state accepts the person, but the person also has to accept the state. Writing in German doesn't mean your nationality is German; perhaps you can argue that her writing is of Germany in only the way that an author whose nationality is German can be, but I don't think writing in German and living in Germany is enough.

Thomas Mann is certainly American. He's quoted on Wikipedia as saying "As an American citizen of German birth..." That's not his primary nationality, but it's certainly the one he took later in life.

I think part of this is a difference in how I think of nationality, part of which is probably because I'm American. Your country is the country you have sworn an oath to. Tawada can move to Germany and write in German, and if she's happy with Japanese citizenship, then that doesn't change her nationality. I could talk about German works and German literature, but if you ask me for nationality, that's what I'm going to answer.

And then there is Nabokov. :) Do we pick Russia, Germany for where he wrote the early novels actually or USA for the later ones? :)

>20 AnnieMod: Certainly a multiplicity of nationalities might be nice for Nabokov, but I wouldn't include Germany; to quote Wikipedia:

Of his 15 Berlin years, Dieter E. Zimmer has written: "He never became fond of Berlin, and at the end intensely disliked it. He lived within the lively Russian community of Berlin that was more or less self-sufficient, staying on after it had disintegrated because he had nowhere else to go to. He knew little German. He knew few Germans except for landladies, shopkeepers, and immigration officials at the police headquarters."

>19 prosfilaes: Citizenship is technically bidirectional, but the state holds significantly more power in the relationship. A state can grant someone citizenship without their consent (at birth) and can revoke it at will but a person cannot declare their own citizenship without the consent of the state and even in the US in order to relinquish one's citizenship one has to leave the country.

>19 prosfilaes:
Well, there's "nationality" and there's "which national literature do an author's books belong to", which aren't the same thing, and which is why I asked how we're defining nationality.

Without further context, I would generally interpret "nationality" much the same way you do -- as connected with citizenship and similar concepts.

But when we're talking about a graph assigning authors a location on a map, or a country, I don't know whether this is the most useful definition. Nobody is likely to consider Asimov a Russian writer, or to study Thomas Mann in a course on American literature. If the purpose of the graph is to see how many authors I have read who represent a particular country or part of the world, then assigning an author to a country that has little connection to their work doesn't seem particularly relevant.

Citizenship is only one facet of identity.

It's very much possible to have a passport for a country one doesn't feel a particularly strong allegiance to. One may be a citizen of a country due to birthplace or parentage without having spent any significant amounts of time there. Someone who has fled their native country due to war or persecution may choose to be naturalized in another country for purely pragmatic reasons (security, simplification of bureaucracy) or because they would otherwise be stateless, but their identity and their writing may continue to be anchored in their original homeland rather than their adopted country.

Conversely, a person may live in a foreign country for a very long time with no plans to return to their country of origin, be fully integrated in the language and culture, and yet not be naturalized in that country. Because they may not be eligible for citizenship or the country where they are living makes it very difficult to become naturalized. Or because citizenship would require sacrifices they are not ready to make (for example, renouncing their birth citizenship). Or because citizenship would offer few practical benefits they don't already have.

As an example of why citizenship doesn't tell the full story about identity, EU citizens who reside permanently in other EU countries generally have many of the same rights as citizens of that country -- including some voting rights -- and hence may have no particular reason to naturalize. A number of my British friends here in Germany applied for German citizenship after the Brexit referendum so that they could continue to have access to the benefits of the EU, not necessarily because they suddenly decided that they considered themselves German.

>21 prosfilaes: The Germany was almost in jest (someone higher in the thread was talking about residence being important). His Russian period is when he is physically in Germany - does not make him a German writer any more than going to school to UK makes him a UK one. :)

never mind

First, "nationality" is a problematic concept from the get-go--an artificial (frequently colonialist) imposition in gajillion cases, such as many African, Middle Eastern etc. people. To many the nation-state they are linked to means less than their ethnicity, region, tribe or whathaveyou. To many other, the opposite is true--an "umbrella" nationality may be preferred for political as well as personal reasons. In short, as an answer to the question "where do you belong?", nationality is a wholly imperfect answer--in fact, I don't see what else "nationality" truly answers except the plainest, most vapid question of "what passport are you holding?"

Second, it CAN'T be applied in a uniform fashion, which absolutely discredits it from any sort of notion of "collective data" such as people are trying to force through here. It's ludicrous to lump together under this rubric such wildly different cases, and from the antiquity to modern day.

Third, in practice this rubric is clearly totally compromised by all sorts of disparate data--"nationality" being interpreted as ethnicity, birth country, even language. It's a complete mess.

I only have a few suggestions and then I will never again discuss or look at this data again.

First, there is no perfect solution that I could imagine feasible here. But, if possible, I would introduce multiple maps and link the authors' lifetimes to appropriate period maps. Clearly this doesn't resolve all ambiguity and disputes nor could it reflect changes within an author's lifetime, but better to have, say, ancient Romans mapping to a map of the ancient world than to 2021.

At a minimum, if no improvement at all is possible and everyone has to map to existing countries, make some sort of note, a warning, that the purported "nationality" is controversial, complicated or some such.

The thing is, people accept online trash without question and I see the potential for this simplified, stupid, and plain wrong info getting perpetuated.

>19 prosfilaes: Adding to my previous response because I thought of an analogy: I see citizenship as being rather like a marriage certificate -- in theory, much of the time people who are married can be considered a couple and the act of getting married symbolically indicates their commitment to each other.

However, it isn't a reliable indicator, because there are always going to be couples who choose not to get married, without this being a sign that they are less committed to one another or that they are not in a "real" partnership.

Likewise, some people who are married on paper may not be in a relationship; they may be separated but not divorced, or they may have married because of external expectations or for pragmatic reasons but aren't a romantic couple, etc. And not everyone makes it public whether they are married to a partner or not.

So while it's one criterion for determining whether two people should be considered a couple, it can't be the only one (nor can, for example, cohabitation), and it may not always be the most relevant one.

Asimov?

Consider Kafka, Canetti, Andric, Madame Blavatsky, Julien/Julian Green, Albert Cossery, Dante, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Aleksandar Hemon, Jhumpa Lahiri (currently becoming Italian, it seems) etc. There are tons of such cases. Is Bernard Shaw more Irish than British? Should he map to Ireland or England where he actually lived most of his life? One answer uses his ethnicity, the other his nationality.

Language is certainly an important element in deciding where to map authors and I would argue that no one who hasn't written in a language of the adoptive country has any business being assigned to that country. So, no Thomas Mann is not an American author. If we're going to argue about cases like that, this will quickly become a completely useless stat. There are enough of those where a single affiliation is genuinely difficult to decide on.

>28 LolaWalser: Is there a reason against Bosnia for Andrić? Born and lived there, wrote in that language, culturally part of that country, as is his oeuvre. What more do we need?

My opinion is, where they did their writing/are living. Asimov is definitely American not Russian, and I see no problem in filling in the "country for map field" as the US. I would not put any author down for the map as ethnicity. I would use nationality. I agree they are both interesting, but just because someone is ethnically Russian does not mean that is their country. I mean, you might be third generation American and still be 100% Czech (some of my husbands grandparents and great-grandparents were). If they had written anything I would have called them American even though ethnically they are Czech.

>28 LolaWalser:
I agree, there are lots of authors who defy easy classification into any single country. That's why my preferred solution would be to ditch the map and use a country list (including no-longer-existing countries/other political entities) in which authors can be included under as many entries as necessary.

I've been using Asimov as an example because of the patent absurdity of calling him a Russian writer just because he happened to have been born there (i.e., why using "citizenship" as the primary criteria doesn't make sense). There are of course better examples of authors where arguments can be made for multiple countries or identities.

I have been pleading for the map for years. If you don't like it, don't look at it. There are certainly cases where it's not great, and I agree that for the list showing all the values given for the authors would be appropriate, but we already have the data structure of a multi-valued "Nationality" and a single-valued "Country for the map", and see no reason why the occasional judgment call should be the latter shouldn't ever be available for anyone.

>33 lorax: I second that!!!!

>31 al.vick: I mean, you might be third generation American and still be 100% Czech

That Americans think this was something I had a difficult time wrapping my head around when I first learnt of it. No Czech would think of them as Czech. So this would be a potential surce of misunderstandings between Americans and Europeans.

My understanding of the Asimov issue was only that there were multiple nationalities listed for him but only the first one was being mapped, no? Which could easily be solved by either swapping the nationalities around so that USA is first and Russia is second, or putting "USA" in the "country for map" field. Both of those options would map him to the USA without losing any data about other nationalities he might have had at one point or another.

>30 SandraArdnas:

Is there a reason against Bosnia for Andrić? Born and lived there, wrote in that language, culturally part of that country, as is his oeuvre. What more do we need?

He lived there a comparatively short time (up to teens), spending most of his life in Belgrade. He wrote in multiple dialects and published mostly in Serbian ekavian. By ethnicity he was a Croat. By personal conviction he was a Yugoslav, consciously, deliberately developing this aspect and championing the Yugoslav idea in his work. All of this is lost and even betrayed by a reductive assignation to his birth region, as important as it was to him.

Mind you, I'm not even opposing the choice you mention, it would be just as problematic to map him to Serbia or Croatia. I'm just pointing out how misleading such reductive choices are. Andric, like very many best-known authors from that region belongs in every way to a map containing SFRJ* (more or less the heir of the kingdom).

>32 spiphany:

Yes, I understand and agree. I was just reacting like, Asimov? at least that's only a dilemma!

*Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia

>29 SandraArdnas: "Language is certainly an important element in deciding where to map authors and I would argue that no one who hasn't written in a language of the adoptive country has any business being assigned to that country."

Not sure I agree. This depends on a normative idea that a common language(s) is part of national identity. I realize you didn't write "official language", but the implication is still there. There are lots of language communities around the world who speak some other language than that of the majority language of the country they are located in. In some cases their language may be officially recognized as a minority language, but often it isn't. This doesn't make them less an author of the country they are resident in. And there are plenty of examples of authors outside such communities who write in a language that isn't widespread in the country they are living in. They may not be claimed as part of the national literature, but in some cases they are.

I don't know if you would consider Spanish as qualifying as "a language of the US" but there there are certainly authors from Latin America who write in Spanish (often in addition to English, but in Spanish nonetheless) who are taught as part of US literature. Or to give an older example, Ole Edvart Rølvaag's Giants in the Earth, a novel about a quintessential American topic -- pioneers in the American West -- which was written in Norwegian.

See also this book: Multilingual Anthology of American Literature

>33 lorax: The data structure of a multi-valued nationality may be there, but it isn't currently possible to view the full multi-valued data for one's catalog as a whole. The nationality list (under the map) assigns each person to only one country.

>38 spiphany: But those are then among the languages of a given country, so my point stands, even though I was primarily referring to authors who at some point changed citizenship, but continued to write in their native language. That in itself is a very strong indication they should be mapped elsewhere and not to the last country of citizenship. Vice versa also stands, those who changed citizenship and started writing in the language of the adoptive country by that alone become a part of that literature, not to mention that this is commonly followed by their work being rooted in the culture of their new country of residence.

The bottom line is that for the stat to be meaningful, it should reflect what country you see the author as author belonging to. So aside from formal citizenship, language and cultural roots of one's work are as important, if not more.

Yes, and I'm saying that including multiple values in the nationality list would be something I would agree with. "ZOMG get rid of the map!!!!" is not.

>40 SandraArdnas:
But when does an immigrant author's language come to be considered "among the languages of a given country"?

If a group of immigrants get together and publish a magazine in their native language, when do they stop being immigrant writers and start being writers using a minority language of that country?

German-speaking communities have been part of the US for most of its history, and they've published German newspapers, magazines, etc. By that logic Thomas Mann, who continued to write in his native German, could be considered to be writing in a language of the US, and thus, together with his citizenship, would fulfill several critieria for being considered an American writer.

I understand your point -- that the author should be integrated in some way in the literary culture of the country they are living in. And in most cases writing in a language shared by the community in the new country is probably going to be an important part of achieving this.

But I don't think this necessarily has to be the case. Language choice is tied up in all sorts of complicated issues and continuing to use one's native language in literary contexts doesn't necessarily mean a rejection of or lack of connection to the new country.

And some of this is likely also going to depend on the self-understanding of the particular country -- an immigrant author is likely to be received differently in a country that sees itself as multilingual and multicultural than they are in a country where shared language and culture are seen as an important unifying part of the national identity.

(I realize I ought have called this "Country (for map) best practices". Oh well.)

Ignoring those who'd rather get rid of the map altogether, it seems we've at least got a consensus that country of birth doesn't count for much and that Asimov therefore should be mapped to the US.

I expect everyone also agrees that Marx should be mapped to Germany, despite living in the UK for about half his life. He's generally regarded as a German author, he IIUC considered himself German, and he wrote in German.

>42 spiphany: But when does an immigrant author's language come to be considered "among the languages of a given country"?
When there's an established community of speakers. But why are we nitpicking this? Seriously, these discussions always seem to devolve into meaningless (meaningless for the purposes of what's being discussed) details. I'll repeat: IMO the focus should be where does the author as author belong. Those who have not changed citizenship are obviously not problematic. Those who held two or more are the disputable ones. So can we focus on that if we are to arrive at best practices.

>1 AndreasJ: "in which case the mapping evidently goes by the first nationality listed."

Is it definitely doing this? Using the first Nationality not the last? Sorry I don't have any first hand knowledge but if so, it would seem a bug and at odds with how the CK hint on the "Country (for map)" field advises: This field is only necessary if the last entry in "Nationality" is not one.

That sentence implies they intend for the last Nationality entry to have primacy over the others in that field. If instead it maps from the first entry then helpers inevitably will start shuffling the CK around to place any new entry at the top, which seems a messy and undesirable outcome risking mixup or loss of data (and longer editing time), compared to being able to just add any new Nationality at the bottom and leave existing data untouched.

I can't see any clear report in the bugs report topic about first or last Nationality mapping, only a couple of references in longer posts that haven't elicited replies; there is one Tim reply that it does respect the "Country (for map)" field. So possibly someone aware of what it is or isn't doing, eg. with Asimov, may want to post a bug if it's not using the last Nationality, to have this clarified or fixed.

To the general best practice, >18 norabelle414: sounds sensible and straightforward.
If such as the author themselves or publisher describes for example a "...Polish-born French author..." we could thus record "Poland (birth)" and "France". Because we have separate CK for "Birthplace" and "Places of residence" thankfully that neatly disentangles those for all the cases where it's just a location of no significance to Nationality.
- eg. a German author living in USA for a few years, is just an update to Places of residence.
- eg. an author born abroad because of parents travelling, but makes no reference to it beyond that, can be just a Birthplace. The helper can make a judgement call and probably we shouldn't try to set too many rules, since we can record as many Nationality items with qualifiers as needed, (birth), (citizenship), (citizenship, renounced); we can have (mother) and (father) if two Nationalities due to parentage, even (disputed) or (claimed) if there is some argument over it for a long-dead author, and so on.

The only functional thing that matters is having the primary Nationality in its correct place (whether that turns out to be established as first or last in the field), due to it affecting the mapping. So any best practice should stress that as the main point whichever way around it turns out to be, first or last, so that helpers know how to make it map as they intend.

A clear example of the usage of "Country (for map)" could be useful, such as a Roman Empire author who is mapped elsewhere than Italy, or a German Empire author that we want to map somewhere other than Germany, etc. (sorry I can only speak in generalisms, I don't know examples myself).

The vast majority of authors are going to be simple, one Nationality, so probably the best other advice is to remind helpers that they can take anything that seems controversial or complicated to Talk, to seek out second/third/fourth opinions on any complicated cases.

>45 Nevov:

I assumed it used the first one because Asimov was mapped to Russia, the first listed, and not the US, the last listed. Perhaps it changed with the update but the help text was forgotten.

>46 Nevov:

For your third paragraph, an example could be Runeberg, who was born in what was then Sweden and spent most of his life in what was then Russia, but for map purposes surely belongs to Finland.

>44 SandraArdnas: I'm not nitpicking. I have a tendency to read authors who don't fall neatly into national categories, so I'm very leery of blanket statements because I've seen too many exceptions.

I repeat: what do you understand by an "established community of speakers"? How large does it have to be? Is it necessary for this community to span multiple generations, or would a group of first-generation immigrants or emigres count? Lots of major cities have neighborhoods dominated by immigrants from a particular country or language group ("little Italy", "Chinatown", etc.). Do these qualify to establish the language in the country? What level of acceptance/recognition does this community have to have at a national level?

Language politics are complex. I don't see choice of language as a reliable criteria for whether an immigrant writer should be considered a writer "of" the adopted country -- because it suggests that language and national identity are linked (not necessarily the case), and because it requires deciding what languages do, in fact, "belong to" that country.

>46 Nevov: I agree that a clear statement by the author themselves would be ideal.

But often this isn't available, or it is phrased in such a way that doesn't necessarily provide clear guidance (Joseph Brodsky answered the question of whether he was American or Russian with "I'm Jewish; a Russian poet, an English essayist – and, of course, an American citizen").

My original question remains -- should the "nationality" field include only officially recognized nationality/citizenship, or can it include more fuzzy affiliations with a particular country?

Since the "country (for map)" field is only meant to have one value, this means that the only remaining option for authors who have multiple (not necessarily citizenship-based) country affiliations is the "nationality" field.

Re: Asimov, the "birthplace" field also indicates his history, so I don't see it as essential to list "Russia" under nationality. I don't see it as wrong, either, but it comes down to a question of what purpose the field is meant to serve.

>50 spiphany: With that statement, I think Joseph Brodsky make his chosen nationality clear. Russian and English languages, as well as Jewish ethnicity and religion, are parts of the USA.

What would you like Brodsky's nationality and/or country for the map to be in the long run?

>51 aspirit: I don't see it as nearly so clear-cut. Brodsky carefully qualifies each of his statements, claiming multiple identities in different specific contexts. He doesn't say he is an "American author" -- in fact, he calls himself a "Russian poet".

His first answer is "I'm Jewish." I.e. that identity is more important to him than Russian or American.

>52 spiphany: What would you like Brodsky's nationality and/or country for the map to be in the long run?

>49 spiphany: Do you have an example where an author has changed citizenship, continued to write in native language, but should be mapped to a new country? If not, why is it not suitable as one of the best practices? Best practices are general guidelines, not a law set in stone. Even if once in a blue moon there's a need for an exception, it's an exception particular to one specific case. Once we establish some best practices, we'll still need a thread to talk about remaining dubious cases, so those can be talked about there. Brodsky is one such example. (He's not Israeli, so Jewish doesn't help map him). Having this as one of the best practices would however abolish the need to discuss authors like Mann or Kundera, which to me a clearcut

The best practices should be the best practices. However, I think I'm going to make a change here in how it works--to allow people to switch between seeing ALL nationalities and seeing just the first one.

>54 aspirit: I don't care about the map. I also don't like putting authors into exclusive boxes that allow them to be only one thing or another, when the reality is that many people have multiple identities.

>55 SandraArdnas: Rølvaag (mentioned above) would be an example of an author who continued to write in his native language (Norwegian) in a country (the US) where there wasn't a major literary tradition of publishing in that language, and for whom I would suggest there are strong arguments for considering him an American author rather than a Norwegian one. You discounted this on the grounds that Norwegian can be considered a language of the US. But the same logic would also apply to Thomas Mann as to Rølvaag, and you don't seem to have a problem calling him a German author rather than an American one. While Brodsky and his writing don't fit categories well, it is notable that he was named a Poet Laureate of the US in spite of the fact that his poetry was composed entirely in Russian, not in English. Isaac Bashevis Singer could be considered an American writer born in Poland who continued to write in his native language (Yiddish).

I could list any number of authors who (always or occasionally) write in a language that doesn't align with the established literary languages of the country that they are associated with. Not all of them are immigrants, but the point is that language isn't a reliable determiner of what nationality or literary tradition an author gets linked to.

>56 timspalding: "I think I'm going to make a change here in how it works--to allow people to switch between seeing ALL nationalities and seeing just the first one"

That would be splendid!

In case anyone thinks I'm making too big a deal of this because issues only arise for a very small fraction of cases, here's a random selection of authors from my library who have significant ties to more than one country. I'm not suggesting that both/all countries are equally relevant in each case -- it may indeed not always make sense to list some of these countries under the author's "nationality". But it does, I hope, give a sense of how common it is.

Hamid Ismailov
Leila Aboulela
Rabih Alameddine
Elif Shafak
Salman Rushdie
Nino Haratischwili
Emmi Itäranta
Alastair Bruce
Gaito Gazdanov
Ben Okri
Isabel Allende
Jean Rhys
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Stefan Heym
Ismail Kadare
Hermann Hesse
Albert Camus
Rudyard Kipling
Peter Weiß
Ilija Trojanow
Elias Canetti
Franz Kafka
Mikhail Shishkin
Rafik Schami
Amin Maalouf
Eugene Ionesco
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Nalo Hopkinson
Galsan Tschinag
Milan Kundera
Monica Ali
Samuel Beckett
Marguerite Yourcenar

>59 spiphany: The issue is not how uncommon it is, but whether we can arrive at some best practices for some of those. Or at least formulate any best practices that would help people decide on case by case basis. So far, we have nothing in that sense other than citizenship is not be all and end all of things, which isn't particularly helpful.

Using the Rølvaag example, I would say the argument for being an American despite writing in native language is that he was writing about Norwegian immigrants in America, situating his work culturally in the US. Whether that makes him primarily American author I leave open, but hopefully there's some semblance of best practices principles to be formulated from these.

I see that the debate is not unanimous. Tim's solution is a good point (but what about ranking and priority?)
Compared to my authors, I was in any case able to complete and standardize the nationalities (with dates sometimes if naturalization).
Regarding the country, geography, the order that takes precedence is that which is the most significant for the author (I indicate the dates in brackets)
And that's really great.

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Maybe a writing language field would be a good thing. This for authors (and thus avoid what is translators). Then, the classification of languages ​​mainly used by the author would allow viewing on a map. The advantage is that all countries have official languages ​​and that this is standardized (sometimes several such as Switzerland).

It is just that between the different national laws, the concept of nationality may not always be relevant (blood law, land law, forfeiture, complacency, age criterion, emigration, borders ...) to make the difference. correlation with the works. Exile literature, like that of the White Russians, is a demonstration.
What about Nina Berberova (Armenian father, Russian mother? Russia (1901-1922) then France (1925-1950) then USA (1950-1993) in the order of these geographical displacements (Berlin, Germany & Sorrento, Italy + 39 places.... from 22 to 25). She is first of all US (Professor at Yale + Princeton) then Fr then Russian. She writes primarily in Russian (then English then French)
https://www.librarything.fr/author/berberovanina

For nationalities, I would say
1) US (naturalization 1959)
2) Russian (birth, 1901)

For the writing language:
1) Russian
2) US
3) French

For countries
1) USA (34 years old)
2) France (25 years old)
3) Russia (Birth, 21 years old)
4) Germany (Transit,)
5) Italy (Transit)

But in summary, it is about an American author of Russian origin (having lived in France) who writes like Zweig of the literature of exile.

The key is to classify with relevance

???

I don't think language should be taken into account at all. A US resident who writes in Spanish is not any less American than me, and I write in English despite having only spent maybe 7 days in England in my life. Indeed, most people in the world who speak English have never been to England, and most people in the world who speak Spanish have never been to Spain.

A quick Google of Nina Berberova says to me (who has not heard of her before today) that she probably considered herself to be Russian (based on quotes from her memoir) and publishers certainly considered her to be Russian since they marketed her memoir as Russian and her work is included in collections of Russian Literature. Therefore I would consider her to be Russian. For "nationality" I would probably put Russia, USA, and maybe France. For the "country for map" field I would put Russia.

>62 norabelle414:
This is why the language of expression is to be distinguished from the nationality.
Nina Berberova lost her Russian nationality and had a Nansen passport

See :
In 1921, Lenin issued a decree according to which Russians living abroad must recognize the new regime or they would be deprived of their nationality. They have three months to report to the Soviet consulate in their country of residence. A million Russians ignore this ultimatum. The writer Vladimir Nabokov, who was one of these stateless people, along with the composer Igor Stravinsky and the painter Marc Chagall, will say of his people: “They fell from the world. "
Faced with the wandering of these refugees, a diplomat from the League of Nations, Fridtjof Nansen, grants them certificates allowing them to circulate. It is the birth of the Nansen passport, which will give these stateless persons a legal existence. In 1922, the Norwegian diplomat received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Adn More here (to translate) :
https://www.persee.fr/doc/mat_0769-3206_1996_num_44_1_403048

https://ofpra.gouv.fr/fr/histoire-archives/actualites-et-manifestations/100-ans-...

So Berberova is Russian Literature but US nationality after 59 (She married in 54 in part to avoid being expelled : https://www.actes-sud.fr/sites/default/files/brochure_berberova.pdf

We can say Swiss author of German, Italian or French expression. For Berberova, it's more complex. Even if, again, it is "Russian literature"

Beyond the authors of literature/novel - no articles, thesis -.... who write in 2 languages, there are few, and anyway, one of the languages always remains preeminent

>60 SandraArdnas: So you're not even following the rule that you've been insisting on and that I've been challenging -- that language + citizenship can be used to determine whether an immigrant author should be considered an author of their adopted country.

The point I've been trying to make all along is that for authors with multiple affiliations it's necessary to take into account a variety of factors and there isn't going to be a single rule that can be applied in all or maybe even most cases. Relevant factors would include things like author's own self-identification, amount of time spent in a country, citizenship, literary tradition in which an author works or to which their work is generally assigned, etc. But I don't see any one factor as decisive and I would consider citizenship one of the less useful criteria.

Even for seemingly straightforward cases, when an author has multiple affiliations there's going to be some element of subjective judgement and users aren't always going to agree.

>61 JMK2020: I thought the "country" field was meant to include only a single value, and exists for the purposes of allocating authors to a more-or-less logical place on a contemporary map when their nationality would end up with them being put elsewhere (no longer existing states, significant shifts of borders).

I really like the idea of a CK field for writing language(s) -- not to solve the issues being discussed here, but because it's information that interests me in its own right, particularly when an author writes in more than one language.

---

I'm going to ask again, because no one has suggestd an answer: is "nationality" to be understood ONLY as citizenship, or does it also include less formal affiliations with a country?

We haven't gotten into the issue of what to put in this field for authors who lived in states that existed before modern conceptions of citizenship, or where the political configuration of the state where they lived changed during their lifetime.

The authors in my catalog listed with a nationality of "Russia" include authors who lived in the Russian Empire, the USSR, and the contemporary Russian Federation. I don't think I've seen any who were listed, for example, under both "USSR" and "Russian Federation", but if "nationality" is being interpreted as "citizenship" technically this would be the most accurate practice.

Likewise, "Germany" wasn't unified until 1871; prior to that it was a collection of various states in frequently changing configurations, and many eighteenth-century authors moved between different principalities over the course of their lives. With the exception of a couple authors listed under "Prussia" (one of whom spent part of his life in the Kingdom of Saxony), all of my eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors from this region have "Germany" listed as their nationality in spite of the fact that there was no such entity in their lifetimes. And many twentieth-century German authors were residents of at least three states: the German Reich, West or East Germany, and contemporary Germany.

Some (not all) of my contemporary authors from the UK are listed under "England", "Scotland" or "Wales" -- which I don't object to, though some guidance might be helpful for clarifying when these identities apply vs. that of the nation as a whole. But this usage does again suggest that the "nationality" field is being used for something other than citizenship in a formal sense, because there is no separate citizenship for the component entities, only general UK citizenship.

>59 spiphany:

Since you don’t care about the map, I don’t understand why you think there’s a deal to be made at all.

>63 JMK2020: I think you might be confusing nationality with citizenship? A state can't strip someone of their nationality, only their citizenship. Lenin might have deprived Berberova of her citizenship but that has no effect on her nationality. Which is why I don't think that citizenship is a relevant factor. It's just a legal document.

I don't find any of that relevant at all. I still think her nationality is Russian, for the reasons I stated above.

>64 spiphany: I'm trying to move this forward toward actually having any kind of established best practice, but I give up. Good luck

Just to clarify: Rolvaag lived & taught in the US but wrote in Norwegian for a Norwegian audience so it's not really about a community of local speakers for him. And Giants of the Earth is amazing!

>64 spiphany: I'm going to ask again, because no one has suggestd an answer: is "nationality" to be understood ONLY as citizenship, or does it also include less formal affiliations with a country?

Sorry, I missed this question when reading quickly through posts. As I stated in >18 norabelle414: and >22 norabelle414: (and then in >66 norabelle414:) I would consider citizenship extremely low on the list of factors that determine a person's nationality. Certainly not *only* citizenship, since that would mean a lot of people (e.g. Black people in the United States prior to 1868) have no nationality at all.

>65 AndreasJ: Because there is also a country/nationality list, which does matter to me, particularly if -- as Tim suggested -- he is willing to make it so it can include multiple values.

>67 SandraArdnas: And maybe "best practice" doesn't have to be a set of rigid rules for automatically assigning authors to countries, but a recognition that some things require evaluation on a case-by-case basis using flexible, multiple criteria, no? I see best practice as striving to make categorizations that do justice to the complex identities and situations of real people.

>70 spiphany: Yes, but we are not setting any best practice principles whatsoever here. If everything is case by case and we can't establish any guidelines than this thread is pointless. I'm not the only one who was trying to steer the discussion towards something fruitful. People ask you were you'd map some of those authors. Your answer would help infer your stance and lead to something useful, unlike just picking apart everything and never offering anything purposeful.

I simply don't have the time or patience for back and forth that doesn't lead to anything fruitful. Neither do people who eventually wade into this thread at some later point looking for agreed upon community practices. Your answer is obviously there should be none because that would be too rigid, but in case some are arrived upon eventually, the only way they would be useful is if the OP distills them in the opening post.

If the only criteria is to decide on a case by case basis then people can fill in the field with whatever their gut feeling tells them and no one can say that they're wrong then the field will either become locked to whatever the first person to fill it in puts there or subject to endless edit wars.

>70 spiphany:

Maybe Tim should decouple the list and the map (making them go exclusively by the Nationality and Country fields respectively) and then perhaps everyone could be happy.

69: "I would consider citizenship extremely low on the list of factors that determine a person's nationality. Certainly not *only* citizenship, since that would mean a lot of people (e.g. Black people in the United States prior to 1868) have no nationality at all."

Agreed. And not just historically. Don't Puerto Ricans, people born in Guam, and US and Canadian First Nations people all have second-class or at least anomalous citizenship statuses?

Oh yes, and here in the UK we don't get to be citizens at all, but are supposedly subjects of the crown. The UK (the state) is a collection of nations. Most people identify with their nation (England, Wales or Scotland) rather than with the state. Northern Ireland as usual is a special case, but only of parochial interest and hilarity.

>71 SandraArdnas: >72 jjwilson61:
I honestly don’t think there is a way to assign someone like Nabokov to a single country that doesn’t involve some arbitrariness and won’t leave some users unhappy. (Is pointing that out unconstructive? That’s not my intent.)

If the rules being suggested are relevant and generally applicable, it should be possible to find counter-arguments when someone questions those rules. I’m not poking holes for the sake of nitpicking. It doesn’t strike me as very useful to agree on rules that won’t produce satisfactory results. Even if the rules cover 90% or 95% of cases, that still leaves a remainder that you do need a strategy for resolving.

If it’s a question of determining what countries (plural) an author can be meaningfully associated with -- i.e., what countries can be considered part of an author’s identity as a writer -- I’ve mentioned in various places the main factors that I would consider (without any one factor being decisive):

* Self-identification
* Time spent in a country and permanency of residence there (not necessarily citizenship)
* Connection to the literature and readership of that country (based on things like the topics and themes of the author’s work, their reception in the various countries they have a connection to -- what countries “claim” them and whether the author is considered eligible for awards reserved for authors of that country).

Acceptance within a country of an author as "one's own" is of course highly political and may change over time. De facto, things like "cultural/ethnic ties" and "language" do play a role in how an author is received. I don't see it as desirable to include either as criteria in their own right because they involve normative claims about who is allowed to belong; reception (as an empirical criterium) is more elastic and flexible.

I realize some people may interpret “country” and “nationality” as something other than “what countries can be considered part of an author’s identity as a writer”. If most other LT users are following some other definition, than different criteria may be warranted. In which case, the definition should be discussed so that we can all find a shared frame of reference as a starting point.

>56 timspalding: "I think I'm going to make a change here in how it works--to allow people to switch between seeing ALL nationalities and seeing just the first one."

Switchable options, sure! The more nationality maps the merrier: zooming in by continent would be popular; and having a toggle between alternate projections would sidestep arguments about supersized Antarctica/Greenland, square vs rectangular maps etc. – giving a semblance of putting the user in charge makes us feel more like it is "our" map than a one-option-only does.

But please do consider making it map from the last nationality not the first. When the original nationality map concept was set up, it was well-hammered-out reasoning why it was set up like that, going from the last nationality, supplanting that with Country (for map) when invalid.

Just the thought of all the shuffling around of CK to put the latest/correct one at the top of the list gives me the shivers. Add new line, input new data, save, is so much simpler.

This is LibaryThing, where pedantry undermining the use of features is a way of life. (see also: Tag Combination)

>66 norabelle414: No I did not confuse (and I went to look directly at the academic source / No wikipedia). Berberova is US, she was stripped of her Russian nationality (cf lenin / deja dit) and was recognized by the Nansen passport - ICRC / society of nations - which gave her the status of citizen then acquired a final US status in 59 She will have lived 75% of her life far from Russia.
see the http links...
My opinion, my interpretation, my feelings do not count. These are factual words, facts ... that's why I mentioned Nabokov. And it is he who says it

If you want, more here, because the debate of effective nationalities forfeiture is still relevant today.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/hrc/regularsessions/session25/documents/a-hrc-...
and
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/pol40/7349/2017/en/

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But beyond this point, as it is said above, and if it is a question of illustrating data, the important thing is to know what we wants to show

But first you have to agree on the terms and on the difference between the concepts. Citizenship refers to the full possession of rights in a state, while the word nationality refers to legal membership in a state.

Does it help to qualify an author? and his work? I'm not sure of it.

Nationality is not a complicated parameter to deal with - it is a legal status. Only stateless persons, rare but there are some, will require clarification.

Citizenship seems to me much more complicated to deal with. There are many national laws, many rules without counting the notions of alliance such as marriage / divorce, ancestry, descent ... and all this changes over time. Whether it is the state or the person.

The writing language remains the simplest. There may be a primary, a secondary .... This ranks without too much pb. As has already been said. This is a fairly relevant criterion, moreover indicated in any reference base.

Finally, there can be the notion of place of life, residence ... but even the greatest travelers - Marco Polo - have an identifiable cultural identity.

In summary, the field for the map - if it is to visualize the origin - cultural - of the author and associate it with his work - which itself would be of the same culture - cannot be strictly algorithmic.

I award the language, the place of culture - education - then nationality and citizenship.

On a character, if not an author at least an artist, an example is quite demonstrative. Today, in France, it was decreed that Josephine Baker would return to the Pantheon - Monument of the very great French men in Paris. It is the very example of the difficulty to classify except not its course of life and its work. This is an American American (even if naturalized fr) who expressed an American culture in Paris, France. On the map, France or US? Here it is decided; - in the Panthéon; - In the CK, I would also have put 1, France, 2, US

Another example ? Vernon Sullivan who writes English ... US detective novels .... Later will be known the fact that it is the pseudo Boris Vian ... who retranslated his books into French. Not complicated 1, France ... and not 2; Marketing tips

NB: I find the card principle very good and very demonstrative. Then choose 1 or 2, why not. But if the field for the map is filled in in a relevant order, that's really great. What is fun (in my library, which is quite large and varied) is observing the entire empty areas ... and it looks quite like the google map / street areas ... and when there are authors of africa and / or asia / middle east .... often, it has been a long time - if not always - that they are no longer in their country !!

>66 norabelle414: Which is why I don't think that citizenship is a relevant factor. It's just a legal document.

But legal documents matter. A personal opinion can change from day to day, and if you can't ask the person, is very hard to check. It's also prone to ambiguous answers. On the other hand, gaining citizenship in a new country takes time and energy, and subjects the gainer to certain commitments. It's a real definitive step. It's not the only thing, but it is something.

>78 JMK2020: The writing language remains the simplest.

Except that writing language and nations aren't connected. There are a host of English, French, Arabic, Spanish, German and Italian speaking countries, and virtually all of those countries have speakers of multiple languages inside. The US has hundreds of indigenous languages, more Spanish speakers than Spain, and has the second or third largest population of Yiddish speakers in the world. Switzerland has four major official languages. It simply doesn't work.

Since we're in nitpicking mode, that languages and countries don't map one-to-one doesn't mean they're not connected. They are, albeit in a more probabilistic manner.

But the question of language here shouldn't be about using it as a sole criterion for assigning someone to a country (I don't think even JMK2020 advocates this, altho their wording confuses me), but about using it to decide cases like Vera Efron mentioned in the OP. There's clearly two countries, Sweden and Russia, that can reasonably claim her as a "citizen or resident", and the language she writes in is clearly far more strongly connected with one of those countries than the other. Should the latter be a criterion for choosing between the former? If not, what should be?

>78 JMK2020: the word nationality refers to legal membership in a state.
That is not the only definition of nationality, and personally I think it is less relevant for this particular purpose, as it would mean lots and lots of authors have no nationality at all.

Why should any other argument be more persuasive than the fact that Berberova and her peers considered her to be a Russian author? Knowing that about her (which we don't know for all authors) in my opinion is all we need.

I'm afraid you folks are loosing me. Taking myself as an example : My legal nationality ("citizenship" if you like) was always Dutch. But my heritage and ethnicity are VERY complicated - same for the countries I lived in. Listing all of that would make no sense to me whatsoever.

And language is mostly irrelevant : otherwise we should put most North American authors in England.

>82 Nicole_VanK: I assume you self-identify as Dutch since you filled out your own author CK ;-)

>81 norabelle414: as it would mean lots and lots of authors have no nationality at all

Yes, that happens. Internationally, that's known as being "stateless". It's not an enviable position to be in.

>83 norabelle414: Because I see nationality as a purely legal issue. In that way I'm Dutch. But I have much deeper roots in Indonesia.

First of all, if I created any confusion, maybe you will excuse me.
I would like to precise that language is indeed not a sufficient and relevant criterion for visualizing and locating an author or a work on a map. Or it would have to be a specific map.

Likewise nationality - as it is a clear (but nonetheless changing) legal concept is not always sufficient

Personally, when nationality, borders and citizenship are not enougt expressive - I have already written it - it is education and culture which will determine to which geographical era to attach an author, an artist, a top athlete......, a writer, a musician , a painter, you and me - and Nicole.

So :
1: Country of birth and/or nationality. With the educational and integration course significant enough to be decisive on the future work

then for other cases (possibly)

2: Country of adoption, exile, choice, reaculturation; always with this idea of culture

Are some Bee Gees Gibbs UK, US Australian
1 UK and if necessary 2 US ans at the margin 3) Australia

>81 norabelle414:
In fact, it's quite intuitive, Zweig, Brecht, Mann will always be German, Kundera Romanian, Berberova Russian like Sakharov or Roman Ovid ... and not Romanian

I found a link - serious - about this debate : "Do exiled writers adapt their literature to the market of their host country, at the risk of losing their "authenticity"? Investigation into the heart of the Algerian literary milieu in France." // To translate from french with software

https://www.icmigrations.cnrs.fr/2021/01/06/defacto-024-01/

-- resume: whatever he does, whatever the where they live, they are Algerian authors

and another rather instructive anf interesting link (from cz in french to tranlate) on a debate between writers of diverse origin in a common language

https://francais.radio.cz/ces-ecrivains-qui-se-sont-exiles-dans-la-langue-franca...

In all of these questions, there is one thing that we should not lose sight of: it only affects a very small number of authors.
If it was more than two percent, that would surprise me.
I am also aware that these "difficult cases" often involve important and distinguished authors.

So should we just badmouth a good thing because of the exceptions?
This kind of discussion has already bothered me with other innovations or changes such as the gender issue, the introduction of the new series feature, etc.

We shouldn't concentrate too much on the little things and the exceptional, but pay more attention to what is mostly positive.

Okay, I give in. I've added "Indo-Dutch" to my own author page, because that's not trivial information either. But I think it's silly. I call that heritage and ethnicity, not nationality.

>88 Nicole_VanK:

I call that heritage and ethnicity, not nationality.

And you would be right.