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New heroines of the diaspora : reading gender identity in South Asian diasporic fiction

This thesis looks at literature
by two South Asian, diasporic writers, Jhumpa Lahiri and Monica
Ali, as a space where creative,
cross-­cultural and independent
identities for diasporic women might be created.
The central claim of the thesis
is that diasporic migration
affects South Asian women in
particular ways.
The most positive outcome is that
these women adopt new trans-­border
identities but that these remain
shaped by class, culture and
gender. Hence a working class
milieu such as the one depicted
by Monica Ali, leads to an
immigrant, ghetto-­ised,
community-­based identity,
located solely in the land of
adoption, with return or travel to
the homeland no longer possible.
However, the milieu imagined in
Jhumpa Lahiri’s text, a middle-class, suburban environment, creates a solitary, transnational
identity, lived between countries,
where travel between the land of
birth and the land of adoption
remains accessible. / English / M.A. (English)

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:uir.unisa.ac.za:10500/4692
Date06 1900
CreatorsBanerjee, Lopa
ContributorsRyan, P.D.
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeDissertation
Format1 online resource (85 leaves)

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