At a time when globalization questions the legitimacy of organizing literary traditions based on national categories, the decision by some authors to write in a second language gains importance as an expression of uneasy subjectivities. By virtue of their translingualism they evade the imposition of a national identity built on a linguistic basis.This paper focuses on the cases of Ngugi wa Thiong‘o [1938] – Kenyan writer who forsakes English and turns to his native Gîkûyû–, Juan Rodolfo Wilcock [1919-1978] –an Argentine writer who abandons Spanish and goes to Italy to write in Italian– and Joseph Conrad [1857-1924]– a Polish writer who employs English to write about Africa. It analyzes the transactions these shifts entail and the presence o...