NOVELS BY I. LAYLIEVA AND D. DERKEMBAEV ON THE THEME OF FAMILY AND REFLECTING ON THE LIVES OF MIGRANTS

Abstract

Migration is not only a social but also a cultural challenge: a person leaving their homeland carries language, traditions, and ancestral memory, yet in an alien environment these ties risk being severed. Diaspora literature captures this moment of rupture and simultaneously attempts to hold it together. The problem addressed by this study lies in the contradiction between the need to preserve ethnic identity under conditions of migration and the absence in Kyrgyz literary criticism of an established view on the aesthetics of compatriot writers abroad. The aim of the work is to characterize the plot lines of the novels "Migrants" by I. Laylieva and "Illegal" by D. Derkembaev through the prism of family and migrant life. The material draws on two novels by Kyrgyz authors published in the 2010s, as well as publications on the diaspora in periodicals of Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and China. The study relies on comparative and cultural-historical methods; the analysis of plot lines is supplemented by reference to ethnosociological and psychological works on ethnic identity. It is shown that both novels are built around the figure of a "moving hero" – a journalist, a doctor, a former police officer – and through their fate recreate a picture of the disintegration of habitual ties and the search for new support. Laylieva emphasizes love and moral choice, while Derkembaev focuses on loss and guilt. Common to both texts remains the image of the homeland as a lost and simultaneously retained centre. The authors conclude that diaspora novels perform a consolidating function: they not only describe migration but also restore to the reader a sense of community.