About the Book
Women Writers of the South Asian Diaspora: Interpreting Gender, Texts and Contexts offers varied perspectives on the literary works of women writers hailing from South Asia and living in different parts of the world. This volume deals with themes and issues represented by well-known and newer authors belonging to the Indian subcontinent, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan.
Diaspora literature produced by women is fascinating for its intriguing portrayal of life abroad. For South Asians experiencing cultural differences, adaptation to a new society, acculturation and hybridization processes; the situation can be extremely dissipating or exhilarating depending upon circumstances. This anthology attempts to map the journey of South Asians abroad through the examination of diaspora authors’ narratives. The articles seek to capture the diverse pictures gathered by women writers whose unique vision and understanding of international migration and life in foreign lands adds to the existing literature on the subject. The interviews in the volume bring fresh perspectives through the personal experiences of the authors like Chandani Lokugé and Manjushree Thapa. They share their knowledge, experience, their migration and exploitation in their home and hostland. They divulge their trauma of alienation, identity crises and gender discrimination and explore vistas that are revelatory.
Contents
Introduction / Ajay K. Chaubey and Shilpa Daithota Bhat
Section A: Diasporic Women Writers from India: Critiquing Transnationalism
1 Interpreters of Transnationalism: South Asian American Women Writers / Christiane Schlote
2 The Cultural Citizen in Bharati Mukherjee’s The Tree Bride / Monalisha Saikia and Rohini Mokashi-Punekar
3 Outsider/Insider: Examining the Narratives of Ethnic Violence in Select Literary Works of Contemporary Women Writers from the North-East India / I. Watitula Longkumer and Nirmala Menon
4 Nationhood, Identity and Violence in Easterine Kire’s Bitter Wormwood / Payel Ghosh
5 Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss: Encounters with Neo-colonialism / Rositta Joseph Valiyamattam
Section B: Women Writers from Pakistani and Bangladeshi Diaspora: Contemporary Perspectives
6 Opening Up New Spaces: Arrival Motif in Sidhwa’s An American Brat / Shirin Zubair
7 Ethnic Identity and Multiculturalism in Bapsi Sidhwa’s The Crow Eaters / Moncy Mathew
8 Language, Identity and Politics in Kamila Shamsie’s Broken Verses / Sonali Maurya
9 Islamic Feminism in the Time of Terror: Reading Kamila Shamsie’s Offence: The Muslim Case / Sania Iqbal Hashmi
10 Alienation and Acculturation in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane / Sidney Shirly
Section C: Sri Lankan, Nepalese and Bhutanese Diaspora: An Overview
11 Fragmented Ethnic Identities of Individual Women: Nayomi Munaweera’s Island of a Thousand Mirrors / Shashikala Muthumal Assella
12 Postcolonial Tourism and Gender Politics: Sri Lankan Beach Culture in Chandani Lokugé’s Turtle Nest / Pallabee Dasgupta
13 Revisiting Generational Dilemmas: A Critique of Roma Tearne’s Bone China / Tamasha Acharya
14 Women’s Consciousness and Agency in Manjushree Thapa’s Tilled Earth / Khagendra Acharya
15 Home, Belonging and Diaspora: Manjushree Thapa’s Seasons of Flight and Nepali Identity Conflated with Indianness / Khem Guragain
16 Resisting Patriarchal Hegemony: Reading Kunzang Choden’s The Circle of Karma / Nazneen Khan
Section D: In Conversations with Writers
17 A Journey from Sri Lanka to Australia: Chandani Lokugé in Conversation with Sissy Helff
18 Manjushree Thapa in Conversation with Sally Acharya
About the Author / Editor
Ajay K. Chaubey is a Senior Assistant Professor of English at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Uttarakhand. He is also a Coordinator of the Department at the NIT-UK (Satellite Campus, MNIT, Jaipur). His major publications include V.S. Naipaul (2015) and Salman Rushdie (2016). Additionally, he has number of essays, interviews and book reviews to his credit, which have appeared in national and international magazines and journals of India, Thailand, Australia, UK and Canada. He has attended, participated and presented research papers in the conferences and symposia held in India and England including York St. John University, York; Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham and University of Leicester, Leicester (UK) during June 2014. Dr Chaubey has recently published two volumes – South Asian Diasporic Cinema and Theatre and Mapping South Asian Diaspora: Recent Responses and Ruminations.
Shilpa Daithota Bhat is an Assistant Professor of English in Ahmedabad University, Gujarat. She is the first recipient of Lorna Marsden International Visitor Fellowship to York University, Canada (2015). A Commonwealth Fellow to the University of Toronto, she was also a recipient of the Pacific Asia Network of Canadian Studies (PANCS) grant to Korea University. She has travelled to McGill University, University of Western Ontario, University of Toronto and University of York, Canada, for research. Her areas of interest are South Asian Narratives, Diaspora and Postcolonial Theories, Canadian Studies and Children’s Literature. She is the author of Indians in Victorian Children’s Narratives: Animalizing the ‘Native’, 1830–1930.
