The word ‘Diaspora’ is derived from the Greek word ‘Diasperio’ which means to scatter or to distribute. The term originally associated with the Jewish historical experience but today the term has got a more expanded meaning it refers to common ancestral homeland, voluntary or involuntary migration and a sense of marginality in the country of residence. This term cuts of various disciplines such as Political Science, Cultural Studies and Sociology, etc. On the history of globalization, the term ‘Diaspora’ raises the question of acculturation, assimilation, the loss of identity, etc. Diaspora has been a favorite topic in the transnational world of literature for innovative literary outputs in recent years. People who have flown and tried to settle over the distant territories of the world for various reasons have always settled assurance of home and they cannot allow their roots being blown over into fragments of uncertain insecurities on a foreign land. The intellectuals and authors have tried to represent these feelings in diverse ways in diverse writings all over the world. Having been born of educated middle class Bengali parents in London and grown up in Rhodes Island, Lahiri truly portrays her diasporic experiences in her first novel The Namesake. DISCUSSION: …show more content…
Emmanuel S.Nelson writes in the “Writers of the Indian Diaspora: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook” that writers on the Indian Diaspora share a Diaspora consciousness generated by a complex network of historical connections, spiritual affinities, and unifying racial memories, and that this shared sensibility is manifested in the cultural productions of the Indian Diaspora communities around the world. The element of longing, homesickness and a ‘Quest for Identity’ or ‘Roots’ mark the Diaspora
...is an American by virtue but Indian due to her parent’s upbringing. That is the reason why she is referred to being an Indian-American author which she has embraced. Due to the fact Bengali marries within their caste, Lahiri married a Latin American Journalist Alberto Vourvoulias and have two sons, Octivian and Noor. After getting married, Lahiri does not feel the need to be shy about speaking in Bengali or any other language. Currently residing in Rome with her family to feel how immigrants adapt to change and to go experience what her characters and parents do in her short stories. Through writing, Lahiri has discovered the fact she belongs to both the worlds and the generations of Indian-American immigrants will change and bring intense joy. "It has been liberating and brought me some peace to just confront that truth, if not to be able to solve it or answer it.”
In Brent Hayes Edwards essay, “ The Use of Diaspora”, the term “African Diaspora” is critically explored for its intellectual history of the word. Edward’s reason for investigating the “intellectual history of the term” rather than a general history is because the term “is taken up at a particular conjecture in black scholarly discourse to do a particular kind of epistemological work” (Edwards 9). At the beginning of his essay Edwards mentions the problem with the term, in terms of how it is loosely it is being used which he brings confusion to many scholars. As an intellectual Edwards understands “the confusing multiplicity” the term has been associated with by the works of other intellectuals who either used the coined or used the term African diaspora. As an articulate scholar, Edwards hopes to “excavate a historicized and politicized sense of diaspora” through his own work in which he focuses “on a black cultural politics in the interwar, particularly in the transnational circuits of exchange between the Harlem Renaissance and pre-Negritude Fran cophone activity in the France and West Africa”(8). Throughout his essay Edwards logically attacks the problem giving an informative insight of the works that other scholars have contributed to the term Edwards traces back to the intellectual history of the African diaspora in an eloquent manner.
Haidri deals with conflict of self in regards to the way she identifies herself. She argues that culture and heritage is always undeniable a part of a human that can’t be avoided. Both Wright and Haidri, coming from different backgrounds, shares the quality of having language as the missing puzzle piece that connects them to family and ancestors as well as being multicultural human-beings having to adjust to the societies they live in. As they find the link each writer begin to understand the privilege of being multicultural which helps them become more of a unique individual. A multicultural identity incorporates the customs and traditions like language, families, and ancestors of two or more cultures into one which helps shape a
In “My Two Lives”, Jhumpa Lahiri tells of her complicated upbringing in Rhode Island with her Calcutta born-and-raised parents, in which she continually sought a balance between both her Indian and American sides. She explains how she differs from her parents due to immigration, the existent connections to India, and her development as a writer of Indian-American stories. “The Freedom of the Inbetween” written by Sally Dalton-Brown explores the state of limbo, or “being between cultures”, which can make second-generation immigrants feel liberated, or vice versa, trapped within the two (333). This work also discusses how Lahiri writes about her life experiences through her own characters in her books. Charles Hirschman’s “Immigration and the American Century” states that immigrants are shaped by the combination of an adaptation to American...
The negation of the Diaspora has a mythical character, which functions to legitimize social and political practices and mobilize action and identification with a cause. Gordon establishes this myth of identity through anchoring of the present in the diasporic past and actualization of the diasporic past in the present in the Yishuv.
The concept diaspora was derived from Greek and means the migration, movement, or scattering of people from their homeland that share the some links or common cultural elements to a home whether real or imagined. The reason why the term ‘diaspora’ is important to understand and is useful because it refers not only because its linked and refers to globalization, linking and connecting place, social consequences of migration, but also, to a form of consciousness and an awareness of home at a more personal level. The feelings, relationships and identities that is often very deeply meaningful to migrants. (Raghuram and Erel, 2014, p. 153 -
Rajan, R. S. (n.d.). Concepts in postcolonial theory: Diaspora, exile, migration . Retrieved from http://english.fas.nyu.edu/docs/IO/10743/G41.2900fall09.pdf
Modern identity often takes shape in the blending of lines that weren’t supposed to blend. No matter how coded or enforced, labels never hold all of one’s identity in place. The lines bounding the identity of the refugee are determined by the UN, and dictate a system of values foreign to many would-be refugees. For the Tamil mother from Sri Lanka, individual status as a refugee does not make sense; she is connected to the bones of her son and the soil in which they lie in Canada (Daniel 278). Terms of individuality are relative in the cultural understanding of many displaced peoples: collective identity in family structure supercedes that dictated by Western nation states, though the argument for asylum depends upon cognizance of Western value systems.
...sive’ idea of identity without borders, intermittent through a plurality of cultures, and transcends the traditional, is best represented in the final article by Salman Rushdie. Especially in the article’s allegory, “the broken mirror may actually be as valuable as the one which is supposedly unflawed,” furthermore that, “the broken glass is not merely a mirror of nostalgia, it is also, a useful tool with which to work in the present.” identity that the matter of “'becoming' as well as of 'being; belongs to the future as much as to the past.” (Hall 225) Specifically, identity is not something, which is already fixed existence, but instead transcends time, history and culture, and is submitted to continuous transformation. Furthermore, Diaspora is just one of the areas in which, national identity, gender identity, family identity, are continually being reconstructed.
My paper will attempt to critically analyze the representation of history and identity in Ruby Daniel’s memoir, Ruby of Cochin: An Indian Jewish Woman Remembers, published in 2002. It is a landmark work since it being the first memoir “written by a Jewish woman from the Indian community of Cochin” (Irene Eber). Situated within the context of Cochin Jews, Daniel attempts to interlink a series of personal lived histories with the larger national histories. Using the case study of Cochin Jews, the writer examines the hitherto socio-cultural historical representations and their underlying political agenda. Through her memoir Daniel critically addresses questions like, who benefits from claiming authentic representations of Jewish community in Kerala? What does authentic Jewish identity means? The writer tries to answer these questions by focussing upon Cochin Jewish history and the issue of identity.
Recent years have witnessed a large number of Indian English fiction writers who have stunned the literary world with their works. The topics dealt with are contemporary and populist and the English is functional, communicative and unpretentious. Novels have always served as a guide, a beacon in a conflicting, chaotic world and continue to do so. A careful study of Indian English fiction writers show that there are two kinds of writers who contribute to the genre of novels: The first group of writers include those who are global Indians, the diasporic writers, who are Indians by birth but have lived abroad, so they see Indian problems and reality objectively. The second group of writers are those born and brought up in India, exposed to the attitudes, morale and values of the society. Hence their works focus on the various social problems of India like the plight of women, unemployment, poverty, class discrimination, social dogmas, rigid religious norms, inter caste marriages, breakdown of relationships etc.
It is not only the migration of an individual; it is migration of a whole life style and value system that goes with a migrant. When faced with a different culture and value systems in an alien land one reacts according to one’s belief, religion and education, that deeply affect one’s reaction. There is not only cultural difference .Sometimes when the races are different, colored individuals are discriminated against. Moreover, the natives of the country feel threatened and that sometimes results in a hostile working environment. All these difficulties coupled with a migrant’s own reaction shapes a particular diasporic experience. Bye-Bye Black Bird by Anita Desai also portrays the similar situation where the protagonist experiences the hostile reaction of the people in the land of migration and understands that he is not welcome there. All these varied diasporic experiences and the quest for identity is the reality of their very being in a foreign land. The women English Writers have authentically captured this feeling in their works that a migrant tries to stick to his identity of home and nation in Bye- Bye Black Bird Adit believes in supremacy of western culture and migrates to England. Adit realizes that an Indian is always looked upon as an inferior being by racially biased whites. About Divakarni’s portrayal of character K.S.
Every Indian lives alongside one billion others whom he or she will never meet. Each comes from a different region and religious group, yet shares the common language of cinema. The practice of watching Hindi fiction film creates a unified consciousness among Indians in an “imagined community”, such that they perceive themselves as belonging to a particular identity (Anderson 1983: 35, 70). The mainstream ‘All-India’ Bollywood film transcends regional divides and seeks to define and celebrate a modern national identity, a theme created in the wake of independence (Rajadhyaksha 1997: 681). Beloved by all, the Mumbai film industry intends to reflect the shared tropes and desires of this imagined community and has come to serve as a source of cultural imperialism.
The concept of orientalism refers to the western perceptions of the eastern cultures and social practices. It is a specific expose of the eurocentric universalism which takes for granted both, the superiority of what is European or western and the inferiority of what is not. Salman Rushdie's Booker of the Bookers prize winning novel Midnights Children is full of remarks and incidents that show the orientalist perception of India and its people. It is Rushdie's interpretation of a period of about 70 years in India's modern history dealing with the events leading to the partition and beyond. Rushdie is a fantasist and a creator of alternate realities, the poet and prophet of a generation born at the degree zero of national history. The present paper is an attempt to study how Salman Rushdie, being himself a writer of diasporic consciousness, sometimes perceives India and its people as orientalist stereotypes and presents them in a derogatory manner.
Postcolonial authors use their literature and poetry to solidify, through criticism and celebration, an emerging national identity, which they have taken on the responsibility of representing. Surely, the reevaluation of national identity is an eventual and essential result of a country gaining independence from a colonial power, or a country emerging from a fledgling settler colony. However, to claim to be representative of that entire identity is a huge undertaking for an author trying to convey a postcolonial message. Each nation, province, island, state, neighborhood and individual is its own unique amalgamation of history, culture, language and tradition. Only by understanding and embracing the idea of cultural hybridity when attempting to explore the concept of national identity can any one individual, or nation, truly hope to understand or communicate the lasting effects of the colonial process.