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
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
“Like many immigrant offspring I felt intense pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new, approved of on either side of the hyphen” (Lahiri, My Two lives). Jhumpa Lahiri, a Pulitzer Prize winner, describes herself as Indian-American, where she feels she is neither an Indian nor an American. Lahiri feels alienated by struggling to live two lives by maintaining two distinct cultures. Lahiri’s most of the work is recognized in the USA rather than in India where she is descents from (the guardian.com). Lahiri’s character’s, themes, and imagery in her short stories and novels describes the cultural differences of being Indian American and how Indian’s maintain their identity when moved to a new world. Lahiri’s inability to feel accepted within her home, inability to be fully American, being an Indian-American, and the difference between families with same culture which is reflected in one of her short stories “Once in a Lifetime” through characterization and imagery.
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 -
...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.
Knott , Kim, and Seán McLoughlin, eds. Diasporas Concepts, Intersections, Identities. New York : Zed Books, 2010. Print.
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...
Jhumpa Lahiri, who won the Pulitzer Prize in the year 2000 for her Interpreter of Maladies, is a brilliant novelist. Her first novel The Namesake forms the basis of the present study. Lahiri has the first-hand experience to authentically portray the diasporic experience of the second generation of immigrants in America. At the same time, she had taken pains to imagine the experience of loss and nostalgia of the first generation immigrants also. Jhumpa Lahiri was born Nilanjana Svadeshna on July 11, 1967 in London to Bengali parents. As a child, Lahiri moved with her family to Rhode Island where Jhumpa spend her adolescence. Lahiri went on to attend Bernard College, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in English and later attending Boston University.
From identity, to history, to social interaction, race has a part to play in who we are and we’re left to wonder the implications of race and its importance in our lives. It is the complexity of identity within race that makes us reconsider who we really are. Race is purely a social concept but, there is reality in the way it is expressed throughout the African Diaspora. Race has played an important role in how societies across the African Diaspora have categorized their peoples and contributed to the formation of their identities. In this paper, I will focus on the construction of race and how race and racialization have played significant roles within the African Diaspora, as it has used classifications of the outside to determine the social conducts of a person in society. Even though race is a social construct, with no basis in biology or other science, there is merit to its impact as we can see through the way race impacts diaspora, shapes identity, and changes how society sees
Sharma. S.L. “Perspectives on Indians Abroad.” The Indian Diaspora. Ed. N. Jayaram. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2004. Print.
According to Tanveer Hasan in his case study of Amitav Ghosh’s novels of Indian-American Diasporic Literature, One might argue that there are instances in the characters created by Ghosh who cling to memories more than they cling to their sanity. One cannot of course deny the important role memories have to play in framing or reframing the psyche of an individual, par when they have undergone a harrowing experience such as ‘cultural displacement, factional uprooting, secession claims, and ethnic refugees.’ The clarity with which the characters and the story tellers seem to get in and out of the realms of rational arguments about memory and irrational theories concerning the nostalgia is what makes Amitav Ghosh an author who narrates the tales of experience and not just of plots and
The quest for identity in Indo-English writing has emerged as a recurrent theme, as it is in much of modern literature (Pathak preface). Indeed, often the individual's identity and his quest for it becomes so bound up in the national quest for identity, that the individual's search for his identity becomes allegorical of the national search (Pathak pr...
The discussed introductory chapter briefly introspects the diaspora and the diasporic experiences of the people in the diaspora, their reaction to its changing meanings, and the different definitions of diaspora that have evolved over the ages.
In “One Out of Many,” Naipaul uses the literary device known as “stream of consciousness” in order to efficiently tell the story of immigrants who emigrate to the United States of America. Naipaul tells the story through an Indian man by the name of Santosh, who is emigrating from Bombay to America with his “master”. Santosh’s actions and thoughts of American life and culture is demonstrated unequivocally throughout the work. Naipaul begins his exposition of cultural alienation through the analysis of class. The author allows the reader to observe Santosh’s discomfort while he is on the plane traveling to America. (Norton 1662) Through this observation, the reader notes Santosh’s loss of his traditional Indian caste identity and his subseque...
Kuortti, Joel. "Problematic Hybrid Identity In The Diasporic Writings Of Jhumpa Lahiri." Reconstructing Hybridity: Post-Colonial Studies in Transition. 205-219. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi, 2007.
Every human being, in addition to having their own personal identity, has a sense of who they are in relation to the larger community--the nation. Postcolonial studies is the attempt to strip away conventional perspective and examine what that national identity might be for a postcolonial subject. To read literature from the perspective of postcolonial studies is to seek out--to listen for, that indigenous, representative voice which can inform the world of the essence of existence as a colonial subject, or as a postcolonial citizen. 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.