“Too mouthy, clumsy and scabby to be a real Indian girl, too Indian to be a real Tollington wench”
Meera Syal’s portrayal of Meena in Anita and me is reflective of her own issues on identity and cultural integration. The author’s life is mirrored through Meena throughout the novel in a semi-autobiographical manner. Syal shares similarities with her central character Meena, starting with the migration from India to England as well as coming from an Indian Diaspora. Syal explores issues of culture in the novel as a way to publicise the concept of hybridity and its effect both on the culture Meena inherits and her parent’s heritage. Cultural integration poses the question of identity and how it arises, how someone perceives themselves as opposed
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Syal signifies at this point a change in character of Meena, a sense of becoming closer to something other than culture, rather an understanding of herself. This enables her to adapt to either
McClintock, Ann. “No Longer in a Future Heaven: Nationalism, Gender and Race”. In: G. Eley e.a. (eds), Becoming national. Oxford, Oxford University Press: 1996. 259-284
...d and left with little cultural influence of their ancestors (Hirschman 613). When the children inadvertently but naturally adapting to the world around them, such as Lahiri in Rhode Island, the two-part identity begins to raise an issue when she increasingly fits in more both the Indian and American culture. She explains she “felt an intense pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new”, in which she evidently doing well at both tasks (Lahiri 612). The expectations for her to maintain her Indian customs while also succeeding in learning in the American culture put her in a position in which she is “sandwiched between the country of [her] parents and the country of [her] birth”, stuck in limbo, unable to pick one identity over the other.
Establishing an identity has been called one of the most important milestones of adolescent development (Ruffin, 2009). Additionally, a central part of identity development includes ethnic identity (ACT for Youth, 2002). While some teens search for cultural identity within a smaller community, others are trying to find their place in the majority culture. (Bucher and Hinton, 2010)The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian chronicles Junior’s journey to discovery of self. As with many developing teens, he finds himself spanning multiple identities and trying to figure out where he belongs. “Traveling between Reardan and Wellpinit, between the little white town and the reservation, I always felt like a stranger. I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other” (p.118). On the reservation, he was shunned for leaving to go to a white school. At Reardon, the only other Indian was the school mascot, leaving Junior to question his decision to attend school he felt he didn’t deserve. Teens grappling with bicultural identities can relate to Junior’s questions of belonging. Not only is Junior dealing with the struggle between white vs. Indian identities, but with smaller peer group identities as well. In Wellpinit, Junior is th...
Alexie, Sherman. The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2007. Print.
The average person wants one thing more than anything else, and that thing is to belong. Usha, a young girl from Calcutta, is no different. Already trying the find her place in the world, Usha must now assimilate into cultural society within the United States. Usha’s uncle, Pranab Kaku, came from Calcutta as well having first come to America, his experiences start off worse than Usha’s, which causes him to join the family in an act of social grouping. With the Old World trying to pull them back and the New World just out of reach, both must overcome tradition and develop their own personal values.
The identities have tended to be divided into some different categories, such as gender, race, and class, and these sources have been judged in the different ways. In other words, the different determinant factors of the individuality have been considered separately, and these components have been regarded as a unrelated simple category. Under these points of view, however, it is hard to recognize the problems of interrelated individual component of the identity. Thus, to solve the disregarding crossover point, the new theory of the “intersectionality” are essential. This essay explores the key definition of the “intersectionality” from the viewpoint of gender studies, and how the concept is connected with the social system and individual identity
Identity is 'how you view yourself and your life.'; (p. 12 Knots in a String.) Your identity helps you determine where you think you fit in, in your life. It is 'a rich complexity of images, ideas and associations.';(p. 12 Knots in a String.) It is given that as we go through our lives and encounter different experiences our identity of yourselves and where we belong may change. As this happens we may gain or relinquish new values and from this identity and image our influenced. 'A bad self-image and low self-esteem may form part of identity?but often the cause is not a loss of identity itself so much as a loss of belonging.'; Social psychologists suggest that identity is closely related to our culture. Native people today have been faced with this challenge against their identity as they are increasingly faced with a non-native society. I will prove that the play The Rez Sisters showed this loss of identity and loss of belonging. When a native person leaves the reservation to go and start a new life in a city they are forced to adapt to a lifestyle they are not accustomed to. They do not feel as though they fit in or belong to any particular culture. They are faced with extreme racism and stereotypes from other people in the nonreservational society.
Weedon, C, 2004 Identity and Culture : Narratives of Difference and Belonging, Open University Press, Maidenhead
In Stuart Hall’s “Ethnicity: Identity and Difference,” he claims that identity is a volatile social process through which one comes to see the self. Hall argues that identity is not a thing rather a process “…that happens over time, that is never absolutely stable, that is subject to the play of history, and the play of difference.” These factors are constantly entering the individual in a never-ending cycle, re-establishing and affirming who one is.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2000. 333-358.
Nagel, Joane. “Constructing Ethnicity: Creating and Recreating Ethnic Identity and Culture”. New York University Press. Washington Square, New York 1998.
Knott , Kim, and Seán McLoughlin, eds. Diasporas Concepts, Intersections, Identities. New York : Zed Books, 2010. Print.
When it comes to post-colonial literature, most initially think about the colonization of other countries and how it has affected the natives. Though it is the most well known form of post-colonial literature, it is not the most wide-spread. By slightly altering the framing in which one looks at it, the idea that feminist literature by women from a patriarchal society is post-colonial literature begins to make sense.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. "Under Western Eyes: Feminist– Scholarship and Colonial Discourses." Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham: Duke UP, 2003. 18-42. Print.
... If one is to read this literature in a way which will shed some light on the postcolonial condition, one must understand and adopt the theory that we are all walking amalgamations of our own unique cultures and traditions. We are all always struggling with our own identities, personal and national. We must understand that there is no "one true voice" representing an easily identifiable postcolonial condition, but, instead, each author is his or her own voice and must be read as such.