Shapeshifting In Chira Banerjee Divakaruni's The Mistress Of Spices

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Recommended: Features of postcolonial literature

Changing Selves as a Mode of Survival: Tricksterism and Shapeshifting in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices In the scenario of socio-economic, political, and cultural globalization, myth is used as a postcolonial tool to connect various Native cultures together from a regenerative perspective. In the contemporary literary context, while discussing mythical characters in numerous hues and forms, human and animal, natural and supernatural as they coexist in the postcolonial texts, the element of camouflage, deception, disguise, changing selves, and shapeshifting become significantly integral to the postcolonial discourse. The contemporary writers create various magical camouflaged worlds occupied with postcolonial selves who celebrate their ability of camouflaging and shapeshifting for survival. Indian- American diasporic writer Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni marks uniqueness in her literary style through adaptations from a mythical past as she subtley explores the …show more content…

Both of them are marginals and subalterns in a postcolonial American society. When Tilo, the migrant Indian spice vendor seeks an answer for the assertion of her blurred identity, Raven, who is unaware of his Native American lineage till he is ten years old, now, intends to follow the path of his Native tradition. He longs “to go back to the old ways, the ways of the earth before it was spoiled. To the earthly paradise” (TMS 253). Both the characters camouflage their identity in a postcolonial society as a mode of survival. Both of the trickster characters carry the legacy of their respective Native cultures while negotiating the east and the west in terms of mythical personifications but choose to wrap it up as their disguise and thus these transformations become essential for their existence in a postcolonial

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