Meena Alexander through her diasporic writings and experiences exemplifies that diaspora, displacement or dislocation essentially stems from a sense of loss of identity, an intrinsic need to find one’s ‘self’, one’s roots in a land that is basically alien but where one needs to establish oneself and treat as one’s own. 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. The term ‘diaspora’ has manifold connotations in the present academic scenario. From the original meaning of dispersal of Jews from their homeland, it has nowadays come to denote …show more content…
The multiple diasporic elements she refers to, take her to a unique zenith of diasporic emplacement and are successful in creating the identity, which she has always tried locating in various migrant situations and circumstances. She symbolizes the contemporary group of writers who are concerned with crossing over from one culture to another without compromising either, negotiating new borders, and reconstructing themselves. “I have in me these worlds that need to be brought together- very crudely, India and America- and sometimes I feel that I keep treading the edge of the fault line in between,” states Meena Alexander in Yellow Light: The Flowering of Asian American Arts (“Meena Alexander” 84). ‘Fault line’, which is the central metaphor in Alexander’s work, draws upon her history of travel in order to display the link between movement and identity or ‘self’. For Meena Alexander’s migrant narrative, language offers a home. The various terrains Alexander has shifted through resonate in her writing, allowing her works to explore the position of the immigrant, marginalized subject. The author continues to explore the notion of creating a life in her writing. She asks what is definitely the most recurring and poignant question in all immigrant literatures: “Can I become just what I want? So is this the land of opportunity, the America of dreams?” (Fault Lines
In Maya Angelou’s Champion of the World and Amy Tan’s Fish Cheeks both convey their struggles with identity. Both authors are from minority cultures, and describe the same harsh pressures from the dominant culture. They share situations of being outcasts, coming from different racial backgrounds and trying to triumph over these obstacles. Tan and Angelou speak about the differences between their childhood selves and white Americans. Tan talks about the anxiety of a teenage girl who feels embarrassed about her Chinese culture, and who wants to fit in with American society. Angelou’s explains the racial tension and hostility between African and white Americans.
Edwards begins to articulate his argument by providing solid information on the “intellectual history” of the term from scholars who might have coined this term before the 1950s and 1960s. Edwards mentions prestigious intellectuals such as sociologist W.E.B Du Bois and activist Marcus Garvey as being “ engaged with themes of internationalism, but diaspora has only in the past forty years be...
Diaspora is defined as a group of people who live outside the area in which they had lived for a long time or in which their ancestors lived. As for the film the Peazant family makes the connection by locating their self among the Gullah people of the Atlantic Sea Islands, off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. They were brought to the continent as slaves of their Ibo landing. They migrated to the islands which were their first stop to New World. Most left the island of the misery they faced on the plantation, but some remained to grow and work. With the is...
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...
While the concept of an “African diaspora,” or African dispersion, has been gaining popularity over the years, there is not a comprehensive definition of the term, which is the main argument of “Defining and Studying the Modern African Diaspora.” Palmer organizes the major African diasporas into two categories based on their time and characteristics. Starting 100,000 years ago and concluding in the 19th century, the pre-modern diasporas differed from the modern diasporas in the existence or “racial” oppression and resistance.2 Palmer writes, “The modern African diaspora, at its core, consists of the millions of peoples of African descent living in various societies who are united by a past
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 -
Knott , Kim, and Seán McLoughlin, eds. Diasporas Concepts, Intersections, Identities. New York : Zed Books, 2010. Print.
As the Diaspora experience is presented as a distinct identity trait of the Jewish people, there is ...
As a result, literature has to follow certain guidelines to be classified as Asian American; being placed in a box limits many great pieces of work to gain the recognition they deserve. As Wong and Sumida state, Asian American Literature is a presentation of American culture within Asian American history and culture, rather than a representation of the entire culture. “Asian Americans” is a large and complex, pan-ethnic group of people making it difficult to classify them all under the same stereotypes. Many Asian American works portray Asian Americans as “perpetual aliens or castaways whose cultures tumble nicely and helplessly” (4). This is because Asian Americans create their own culture, a hybrid of Asian culture and American culture, they don’t fully fit in with American culture just as they don’t fully fit in with Asian culture. Asian American Literature is a reflection of just that, it doesn’t fit into specific guidelines, breaking away from the labels that others create and making its own impact by culturing its readers on being Asian American. Whether the author is Asian American or is solely writing about Asian American culture, it still classifies as Asian American Literature
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.
To truly understand multicultural literature, one must first try to understand the cultural background of the author. In the case of this piece, we are examining the Chinese culture and Jen’s experiences which shaped her writing. Gish Jen is a second-generation American. Her parents immigrated separately in the 1940’s. Her mother came to America to go to graduate school and her father came as part of the war efforts during World War II. With the rise of Communism in China, both were forced to remain here and ended up building a life together and raising their 5 children as Americans. Because they came in the second of three “waves” of Chinese Immigration, their reasons for coming and the process of assimilating into the American way of life was very different than other Chinese immigrants.
In the five texts by Rudnyckyj, And, Parrenas, Maher &Pahar, and Rushdie there is an overall theme of identity in diaspora. Regarding identity, Stuart Hall argues that, “instead of thinking of identity as an already accomplished fact, which the new cultural practices then represent, we should think, as a “'production', which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation.” (Hall 222) In other words, identity is not stagnant, but active and forever changing. Moreover, that cultural practices and people are not represented by a restrictive an innate personality or existence but instead represent a dynamic understanding that is constantly in motion. How these five articles all inter-relate is that they give a clear representation of how diaspora (a group of people who live outside the area in which they had lived for a long time or in which their ancestors lived) not only produces the transformation of identity, but also the production of new identity. In brief, diaspora is an impetus for the metamorphosis of identity.
The term “Diaspora” is used to refer either to singular person or ethnic population forced or induced to leave their traditional ethnic homelands being dispersed throughout other parts of the world, and the ensuing developments in their dispersal and culture. In the beginning, the term was used by the Ancient Greeks to refer to citizens of a grand city who migrated to a conquered land with the purpose of colonization to assimilate the territory into the empire. A large number of Indians migrated to Far East and South East Asia to spread Buddhism during the ancient times. The migration was a history of misery, deprivation and sorrow during the colonial period. In this century the migration was mainly due to the industrialized and
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.
OED defines diaspora as “the dispersion or spread of any people from their homeland”. This notion of 'homeland' and whether this helps to form your cultural identity is problematic, as we question who or what defines you. Is it really true that home helps fundamentally form your sense of self and your conception of identity and therefore your cultural identity. If you have a sense of self does that help form a strong cultural identity? Do we need to have 'real' territory to have cultural identity or can imaginative geography and history help intensify ones cultural identity and belongingness? In this essay, I will use Amitav Ghosh’s novel The Shadow Lines and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake. I will examine through the characters of Tha'mma and Ila in Ghosh's novel and Ashima and Gogol in Lahiri's novel and how their depictions of diasporic experience results in; vexed questions of identity and a quest for the Self through either the rejection or embrace of the native cultural identity. Many of the diasporas characters are unhappy with their hybrid cultural identity. Mishra Vijay states that diasporas “do not feel comfortable with their non-hyphenated identities as indicated on their passport” This non-hyphenated identity on passports is ambiguous and may leave the person feeling uncertain as to how to establish their cultural identity in society leaving a notion of feeling connection to both their native and adopted cultural identity but never feeling belongingness to either.