Diaspora and Syal’s Anita and Me
Diaspora, a term used to describe the dispersion of a people from their original homeland, has become an increasingly pertinent topic of discussion in contemporary society. Nalini Natarajan in the essay “Reading Diaspora” argues that “the phenomenon of diasporic populations is by no means new, but its scale in the twentieth century is dramatic” (xiii). Natarajan also argues that the nature of contemporary diasporic experiences, due to the global reach of technology and media is significantly more complex and ambivalent than earlier diasporic experiences. Literary works have become a major source of knowledge about Diaspora and Mishra Sudesh, the author of the essay “From Sugar to Masala: Writing by the Indian Diaspora” calls for a clear distinction between the old (sugar) and new (masala) diasporic movements. Sudesh argues that the old diasporic movement is marked by the semi-voluntary flight of Indians to non-metropolitan plantation colonies such as Fiji and Trinidad while the new diasporic movement is the post-modern dispersal of all Indian classes to thriving metropolitan centers such as the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. Sudesh claims that writers of the old diaspora tend to concentrate on the cracks within the experience while new diasporic writers tend to focus on “the liminal or threshold zone of intercutting subjectivities that define the experience of migrancy” (287). Sudesh places Meera Syal, the author of the novel Anita and Me, amongst the many writers of the new or masala Diasporas.
Syal’s Anita and Me is a coming of age novel about a young girl, Meena, trying to cope with the inner and outer conflicts of a child of a minority culture facing both the temptati...
... middle of paper ...
...h she may one day visit her parent’s homeland, India is not her home and neither is Britain. It is the space between these two countries, lifestyles, and cultures that has finally become her home.
Works Cited
Brah, Avtar. “Diaspora, Border and Transnational Identities.” Feminist Post-Colonial
Theory. Ed. Reina Lewis and Sara Mills. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Fludernik, Monica. Hybridity and Post-Colonialism. Germany: Stauffenburg and Veriag,
1998.
Natarajan, Nalini. “Reading Diaspora.” Writers of the Indian Diaspora. Ed. Emmanual S.
Nelson. Connecticut: Greenwich Press, 1993.
Sudesh, Mishra. “From Sugar to Masala: Writing by the Indian Diaspora.” A History of
Indian Literature in English. Ed. Arvind Krishna Melhotra. New York: Columbia
University Press, 2003.
Syal, Meera. Anita and Me. New York: The New Press, 1996.
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
In the book The House on Mango Street, author Sandra Cisneros presents a series of vignettes that involve a young girl, named Esperanza, growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Esperanza Cordero is searching for a release from the low expectations and restrictions that Latino society often imposes on its young women. Cisneros draws on her own background to supply the reader with accurate views of Latino society today. In particular, Cisneros provides the chapters “Boys and Girls” and “Beautiful and Cruel” to portray Esperanza’s stages of growth from a questioning and curious girl to an independent woman. Altogether, “Boys and Girls” is not like “Beautiful and Cruel” because Cisneros reveals two different maturity levels in Esperanza; one of a wavering confidence with the potential to declare her independence, and the other a personal awareness of her own actions and the decision to take action and wage her “own quiet war (Cisneros 89).
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 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.
Mukherjee then begins to compare and contrast her sister in a subject-by-subject organization. She states, “…she clings passionately to her Indian citizenship and hopes to go home to India when she...
“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.
Knott , Kim, and Seán McLoughlin, eds. Diasporas Concepts, Intersections, Identities. New York : Zed Books, 2010. Print.
Its well-known that minimum wage can easy vary from state to state city to city and even county to county. Furthermore each minimum wage law in each state/city or county has their own set of guidelines. The disparity of minimum wages within state lines is very diverse. For example the state of California has a state minimum wage of $8.00, while in Richmond, California the minimum wage $12.30 has recently been approved (www.foxnews.com). This is the highest among any state city or county and $2.00 above San Francisco’s $10.30 minimum wage (www.foxnews.com). For Richmond, California this makes sense becaus...
This research study focuses at negotiating the shifting identities of immigrants and their traumas in postcolonial literature with reference to Lahiri’s fiction. The suffering of every immigrant in achieving a shelter and identity in a foreign land often leads to loss of identity. The qualms, agitation and nervousness of immigrants often increase the issues of identity, and immigrants often feel alienated in the midst of exotic land, they even start to think about achieving new identities. Stuart Hall (1987) a famous cultural theorist discusses the issues of cultural identity and migration as he says “Migration is a one way trip. There is no “home” to go back to”. Change in the place and ambience totally change the circumstances in the lives of immigrants in Lahiri’s fiction, they often try to cling to their own cultural identity and costumes. But the cultural effect is often so strong that it deeply affects the identity of immigrants and they ultimately try to change their identities. Immigrants make an absurd attempt to get mingled in the culture of foreign country. Hall discusses “Cultural identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference” (235).
The science behind humanlike robots is advancing. They are becoming more smart, mobile and autonom...
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.
This paper discusses three aspects of the field of robotics The first is the history of where the ideas of robotics originated. Second, what was the effect that these ideas had on society? Finally, what developments in the field have proved to be useful to society?
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...
Robots are machines that can do the work of a person and that work automatically or are controlled by a computer (Merriam-Webster, 2014). The Robot Institute of America (circa 1979) defines robots as “a reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools, or specialized devices through various programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks” (Branwyn, G.). The Japanese Industrial Robot Association (JIRA) has classified robots based on the following: manually operated manipulators, sequential manipulators, programmable manipulators, numerically controlled robots, sensate robots, adaptive robots, smart robots, and intelligent mechatronic systems (Branwyn, G.). Robots have been improved over time and have proven to be efficient because the computer is controlling them. The history of robots goes as far back as the Ancient Greeks and Romans for the use of toys, tool...
The language and the set-up are very casual for a first person-narrator taking us through her life. It is very casual and formal, almost like she is telling us about her “everyday-life” so to speak. But when she isn’t telling us and getting us through her everyday life, she is usually talking about her parents, sharing thoughts about them. The thoughts and comment on her parents are a bit different. She is at some moment confronting them and their belief. They can’t grasp why she wont go back to India, and she can’t grasp why they’re so intimately focused on their religion. And that’s is the set-up for the more controversial and sensitive style of language in the