Before European colonialism, inhabitants of Guyana were Amerindians scattered across the “land of many waters” (Glasgow 1970:6; Rabe 2005:5). During the era of imperialism (1499-Guyanese Independence May 1966), the Dutch and British utilized indigenous and African slave labor as well as indentured servants from Asia to harvest cash crops (Glasgow 1970:131; Whitehead 2010:53). The British brought indentured servants across the kala pani, or dark water, from India to Guyana under the pretense of a better life. Under the harsh restrictions of colonial life, the Indian indentured laborers, negatively referred to as coolies, were culturally suppressed. Virtually, all aspects of daily life and institutions were altered, including such apparently natural areas of social life as gender. This thesis examines the possible existence of hijra in early 21st century Indo-Guyanese society as a third gender identity from India, that survived the transatlantic separation from India, colonial oppression and postcolonial suppression (Bockrath 2003:83; Nanda 1998; Reddy 2003: 163-189; Reddy 2005a:256-266).

This is an investigation into the ways that postmodern theories and feminist theories have both failed to learn from each other and yet also reveal the blindness' implicit in each other. Postmodern theory has consistently failed to engage gender in any significant way and feminist theory has consisted failed to find the usefulness of the methods and questions posed by postmodern theorists. Both approaches have failed to address the very real and important perspectives of the post colonial others who have been addressing the questions of race, gender, history, and agency for hundred of years. The second half of this investigation looks specifically at the work of three African American women writers, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor and Gayle Jones, in their most recent work. All three novels, Beloved, Mama Day and Corregidora are historical novels concerned with the legacy of slavery, and these narratives themselves exceed all the expectation for postmodern theory and feminist theory in inviting us to understand the relationship between history, memory and the now. In effect the work of these writers succeeds in "theorizing the present" in ways that both feminism and postmodernism fail.

This essay analyzes the cultural concepts of wilderness, utopia, and the pastoral in relation to The Beach from ecocritical and postcolonial perspectives. Evidently, the pastoral is critical in shaping the Western idea of wilderness, and the utopistic mindset plays an equally crucial role in wilderness gazing. The backpackers in the novel seek authenticity—which they feel their everyday lives lack in society—in the remote, ostensibly pristine nature to escape people like themselves. As established in the analysis, the beach dwellers thus undermine their own ideologies when colonizing both nature and people and, in some ways, culturally slum their existence at the beach. They feel better about themselves when living under so-called harder conditions with moderated luxuries and provisions; this ultimately presents how the Western backpacker’s view of nature and indigenous cultures is highly influenced by American pop culture.

Tayeb Salih’s world-literary classic Season of Migration to The North (1967) has been read widely in Arabic as well as multiple world languages. Primarily examined in terms that pertain to the postcolonial field of study, it showcases all the well-rehearsed topics such as coloniser- colonised, identity, nationality, culture, hybridity, literature, language, gender, sexuality, historiography, and most importantly for this thesis: migration. Although the novel has been translated into many world languages, it is Johnson-Davies’ famous English translation (1969) that in my view produces a unique dialogue with the Arabic text. This translation is generally much admired, with only a few critiques, but criticism has not quite addressed the fact that it is in Salih’s colonial language, that is the language he himself could have used. Given that most prominent “writing back to the imperial centre” is in the languages of the colonisers, often in creolised versions of those languages, Salih’s production in Arabic begs the question of linguistic hybridity. In this thesis, I will engage in an intertextual and linguistic analysis of the novel to argue that one cannot regard the Arabic text as “the original” and English as the secondary. Rather, both English and Arabic are co-originary languages of this novel. This demonstrates that the core of the novel is a restless migration between dichotomies produced by the colonial history.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This dissertation approaches literary animals in Asian diasporic novels through the concept of drawing close. I am interested in how literary animals can communicate an endeavour to draw animals close, and how literary representations of this closeness imagine normative human-animal relationships otherwise. I argue that even the most subtle literary animal can be read as a practice and expression of drawing animals close, and this closeness reveals itself most directly through each chapter in relation to belonging, family, and inheritance. This project centers around the question: what can stories offer animals? I argue that the fields of literary animal studies, postcolonial studies, and Asian diasporic studies need to come together in order to attend not only to the multiple ways that animals inhabit Asian diasporic novels, but also to the particular relationships between postcolonial subjects and animals. I chose novels that navigate relationships to animals often informed by Hindu and Buddhist epistemologies as an intervention in the predominantly Western-focused field of animal studies that has prioritized Western religious traditions, philosophies, and literature. Each chapter of this dissertation examines the diverse ways that authors listen to and represent literary animals, at times acting as a reflection of the desire and efforts to fortify the human-animal boundary, and at other times significantly challenging human exceptionalism by advocating for compassion and interdependence between humans and animals. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This project looks at animals in Asian North American novels. Whether they are symbolic, mythical, historical, or everyday companions, I argue that paying close attention to animals in stories that are otherwise about humans reveals how they shape our ideas about belonging, family, and inheritance. I focus specifically on three novels: Monique Truong’s The Book of Salt, Madeleine Thien’s Dogs at the Perimeter, and Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being. Each novel represents animals in complex ways that are informed by various ways of knowing the world, such as religious (Hindu and Buddhist), scientific, or cultural knowledges. One central question that directs this dissertation is: what can literary animals teach us when we learn to pay attention to them?