South Asian Fiction

Student Research
Honors Theses
Colby College Year 2007
Dialectics of Diaspora Space: a Study of
Contemporary, Diasporic, South Asian
Fiction
Christopher A. Zajchowski
Colby College
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The Dialectics of Diaspora Space:
A Study of Contemporary, Diasporic,
South Asian Fiction
Chris Zajchowski
Anindyo Roy
International Literature and Music
May 17, 2007
Contents
Acknowledgements ii
Preface iii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1:
Belonging Through Purity 9
Chapter 2:
Belonging Through Assimilation 18
Chapter 3:
Commodity-Function in Diaspora Space 24
Chapter 4:
Widening the Scope of Diaspora Space 32
Conclusion 40
i
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all those who have aided me with their advice, mentorship,
and friendship over the course of this year. I am forever indebted to my advisor,
Anindyo Roy, for his patience and help constructing the project. I truly couldn’t
have finished - or started, for that matter - without him. Thanks are also due to
Steven Nuss for exciting my curiosity in Indian music, as well as for his push to
reduce the morality discourse in my work. With Anindyo and Steven there is, of
course, the India Jan-plan to thank, as well as the students and staff of The
Gandhi Ashram School, in Kalimpong, India. The families Sudeep Sen and Tarini
Manchanda deserve thanks for opening their homes and providing warmth,
friendship, and fascinating perspectives from Delhi. And, thanks as well go to
Paven Aujla, Vivek Freitas, Ratul Bhattacharyya and Aman Dang for their
recommended readings, as well as to my parents, Dick Zajchowski and Celia
Brown, for their edits and suggestions throughout the process.
ii
An Anecdotal Preface
The tension in the room was palpable. The veins on Vivek’s neck bulged in
tandem with the volume of his voice, both pleading for audience. “…When I got to
the US, I was in shock! I was depressed, and a complete mess. I had to leave after
two years just to regain my sanity. How can we expect these kids, not knowing for
what they are enlisting themselves, to just sign up to completely, irrevocably,
change their lives?” For a moment, the room drew silent. A few students shuffled
their feet. “I think what Ratul is doing is admirable, and we have no right
attacking him,” Logan countered. “And, it is certainly not our place to tell the
students here what they can and cannot do,” added Jordan. “They need all the
help they can get, and just because some of us hated our private school
experiences doesn’t mean we can prevent them the same opportunity.” A faint
murmur of agreement ensued, and our Professors intervened to prevent further
volatility.
Huddled in a dimly lit classroom in the Himalayan foothills, this
conversation felt surreal. A group of thirty students and professors from a small,
liberal arts college in Maine, we had arrived in Kalimpong, at the Gandhi Ashram
School, merely four days ago. We were still overcoming jet lag, getting used to
eating rice on a daily basis, and learning our students’ names. Any conversation
about the ‘destiny’ of our students, or what they did or did not ‘need’ seemed
somewhat hasty and ill advised. Yet, just days into our classes at the Gandhi
Ashram, we were already in turmoil.
iii
∗ ∗ ∗
Founded by Jesuit priest and visionary, Father McGuire, The Gandhi
Ashram School opened in 1994. Through rallying the support of international
NGOs and philanthropists, Father McGuire developed a school designed to
provide free education and a welcoming and warm school environment for some
of Kalimpong’s poorest families. With a largely ineffective and under-funded
public education system in Kalimpong, Gandhi Ashram is one of the only options
for economically disadvantaged families to allow their children a substantive and
nurturing education. A testament to the schools popularity, the fathers and
brothers participate in yearly rounds to neighboring villages to determine which
families are in most need the Ashram’s insistence. In a conversation with Gandhi
Ashram’s newest father, Father Paul, he mentioned during his recent round he
had to turn away countless families who simply weren’t poor enough. He
admitted: “it is one of the hardest part of my job.”
From Father McGuire’s opening of the school twenty-three years ago to
Father Paul’s continuation of the mission, The Gandhi Ashram has experienced a
slew of outside interest. Apart for the Gandhi Ashram’s promise of free education,
the school’s main draw and interest for outsiders its mission to teach each of its
students classical violin. During our time at the Gandhi Ashram, the school’s
orchestra, comprised mostly of older students, traveled to multiple cities within
West Bengal, and was even invited to play in the neighboring province, Bihar.
Gandhi Ashram students have become so adept at playing violin that one
alumnus is now studying and playing in the Munich conservatory. Due to her
iv
success and international coverage of Gandhi Ashram and her stories, over the
past few years there have been a slew of foreign visitors, arriving to teach music,
and ‘discover’ the next virtuoso.
It was within this tradition that we both ‘discovered’ and arrived at the
Gandhi Ashram. Yet, while the Gandhi Ashram is no stranger to visitors, I would
have to argue that our presence was a bit different. First, we were a group of
thirty. For a small school like Gandhi Ashram, and arguably any elementary
school, that’s a lot of new people; for comparison, our presence was equivalent to
thirty Indian college students suddenly appearing at any rural boarding school in
Tennessee, intent on teaching Hindi. In addition to our strength in numbers, we
were also living in the dormitories, eating with the staff and students and
teaching on a daily basis. More than simply visitors, we were quickly absorbed
into the fabric of the Gandhi Ashram community. We visited student’s homes,
engaged in nightly sing-alongs to Green Day and Nepali rock, and played some
monster games of knockout. For the duration of the two-week, winter program
we were a fixture on the school’s landscape.
∗ ∗ ∗
While many factors enabled our exchange with the school, our presence
and easy acclimation to Gandhi Ashram was largely the result of one Colby
student, Ratul, and his intimate connection with both the school and town of
Kalimpong. A second-year Colby student and self-proclaimed native of both
suburban New Jersey and Kalimpong, Ratul had spent the summers of his youth
at his grandmother’s house in Kalimpong. Following high school, he became
intensely involved with the Gandhi Ashram, visiting and teaching during the
v
summers. Thus, through his established connection with the school, and the
interest in expressed in the school by two professors at Colby the teaching
exchange was developed.
Due to his history with Gandhi Ashram, Ratul was seen by some of the
Colby students as an Indian Moses: he helped organize excursions, introduced us
to students, and gave many the lay of the land. Yet, a few days into the program a
slew of students began to question his actions, and how they related with our
presence at the school.
∗ ∗ ∗
While most of us spent our mornings signing “Row, Row, Row your boat,”
and teaching parts of speech, Ratul, had chosen a slightly different project. From
his knowledge of the adversity faced by its students, Ratul decided the best way
he could be of service to our students was to search for schools in the US
receptive to the Ashram’s mission. By locating scholarships for high school
attendance in the US, Ratul felt he could truly make a tangible difference in the
lives of some of the children he had grown to love. After months of emails, phone
calls, and meetings he made considerable headway, and had intrigued a fair
number of private high schools throughout the Northeast. Thus, while many of us
arrived in Kalimpong with dinosaur erasers, frisbees, and colorful story books,
Ratul came armed with view books from Hodgekiss, essay questions from
Deerfield, and the hopes of matriculation.
Response to Ratul’s project was immediate. Some Colby students were
thrilled at Ratul’s very practical initiative, and elated with his interest in
providing an alternative higher education for kids who didn’t have many avenues
vi
of upward mobility. Yet, while many were at least content with the project, so
much so that they volunteered their time to read and correct application essays,
others weren’t as convinced. While older students were shown promotional
videos and view books for Deerfield and Hodgekiss, the dissenters felt there was a
lack of perspective being given to the impact of such a monumental change in
these young students lives. Additionally, some students, disenchanted with their
own private high school education, did not want to wish what they conceived as
the “pop-collared, shallow ‘preppyness’” upon the students whom they perceived
as innocent and unscathed by the evils of upper-crust, prep. school society. It was
quite a debate, and, within a few days of arriving at the school, we found
ourselves in the middle of a group meeting to discuss the polemic.
∗ ∗ ∗
Though not entirely convinced, I sided with the skeptics. I wasn’t opposed
to the Ratul’s project - but I was concerned with how it was being presented. First
and foremost, I feared our presence would be perceived as linked with some sort
of recruitment effort. Just four days into our stay at The Gandhi Ashram it was
evident that many of the students were in awe of us, and that we were beginning
to assume “role-model” status. Thus, when Ratul interrupted our classes to show
promotional videos, I worried that it would seem we were all not only validating
his initiative, but also encouraging our students’ participation. Knowing the
lasting impression my young camp counselors and teachers made on my life,
both positive and negative, I didn’t want these kids to feel like we were selling
them anything. Perhaps selfishly, I wanted an experience with them and the
school unfettered by any imposition of values. I realize now that, aside from this
vii
issue, in any forum of cultural exchange discussion of values is inevitable, but at
the time drove my opposition.
While my own worries of cultural imposition muddied my opinion of the
project, I could also emphasize with Vivek’s brand of opposition. While Ratul had
passed out view books and shown videos, it seemed he neglected to show
international relocation as anything but positive. And, even though he wasn’t
constantly over-selling or singing the praises of these schools, I felt a danger of
promoting Northeast private school education not as an option but the option.
Furthermore, I wasn’t so much worried that we would be setting these kids up for
failure, but rather that they would be accepted and leave without a balanced view
of the change they were about to undertake. I was worried they’d “succeed,” and
that they’d find, like Vivek had, that their new life in the US wasn’t all it was
cracked up to be.
∗ ∗ ∗
During the time of the private school polemic at the Gandhi Ashram School,
Ratul’s grandmother, Mrs. Bhattacharyya, visited the our group. A resident of
Kalimpong and a local doctor, Mrs. B had come to the school both out of a
personal curiosity regarding our own projects and on business. Various students
were battling a slew of different ailments, and since our arrival Mrs. B had been
our go-to doctor. Having previously fallen ill and been a recipient of her care, I
found Mrs. B’s presence both calming and comforting. Additionally, wise with
age, Mrs. B was not only an excellent physician, but also incredibly well read and
excellent conversationalist.
viii
After her rounds, a group of students and I sat in the dormitory chatting
with Mrs. B. about the school, our projects, and the adjustment to Kalimpong. I
forget who actually addressed the issue, but somewhere in our conversation
about the school we suddenly veered into the private school debate. Not sharing
her grandson’s enthusiasm, Mrs. B was skeptical about the outcome of the
project: “Well what is the sense of sending them there,” she mused. “They’re just
going to turn into little Bijus.”
∗ ∗ ∗
By invoking Biju, Mrs. B was referring to a character from trasnational
author Kiran Desai’s latest novel The Inheritance of Loss. Biju, the son of a poor
cook from Kalimpong, India – the same Kalimpong in which the Gandhi Ashram
is based – and the focus of my fourth chapter, emigrates to the US in search of
better opportunity and a more prosperous life. Yet, following a variety of jobs,
Biju realizes he isn’t really happy in the US, and his growing alienation from his
father makes him question his migration.
∗ ∗ ∗
From her comment it was evident that Mrs. B had read Desai’s novel, but
it’s an understatement to say that Mrs. B was merely familiar with its characters
and work. Mrs. B’s sister, the world-renowned, transnational author, Anita Desai,
gave birth to the architect of The Inheritance of Loss on September 3rd 1971. Just
as Ratul had grown up spending his vacations at Mrs. B’s, his aunt, Kiran, had
spent her small chunks of her own life, up to age fourteen, in Kalimpong. As Mrs.
B conveyed, while curing me of one of my many colds, Kiran’s connection with
Kalimpong provided the lens through which she developed her novel. Many of
ix
Desai’s characters, such as Father Booty, the Afghan Princesses, and Lola and
Noni are exact replicas of real life residents of Kalimpong, presented often
without even a change in names.
Since the novel’s release and subsequent success, Mrs. B, being the closest
relative to Kiran living in Kalimpong, has received the brunt of local criticism for
representation and depiction of the Gorkha movement. While her position on the
front line of Kalimpong response has caused Mrs. B to abstain from
interpretation, simply recommend the many critics “write Kiran,” it seemed, from
her “Biju” comment, Kiran’s novel and its historical accuracy had made a strong
impression.
∗ ∗ ∗
While the private school fizzled out with lackluster support from the school, Mrs.
B’s words stuck with me throughout the remainder of my time in Kalimpong. To
me, our few debates regarding transnational relocation for access to ‘better’ and
more ‘empowering’ higher education fit well with our debates on multinational
corporations, micro-financing, identity politics, and the IMF and WTO. Though
some of our group members viewed our conversation as an isolated event, I felt
we had all participated in an incredibly charged discourse on the many
implications of globalization, in both our projects and the lives of our students. In
other words, Mrs. B’s comparison of our student’s potential relocation with Biju’s
seemed not at all far-fetched, but a fitting, real life connection of our often reified
academic concepts. We became implicated in a debate, larger than just our own
reactions to a potential scholarship program.
x
To be fair, the comparison isn’t necessarily prefect. The Gandhi Ashram
students’ arrival in the US would be somewhat unlike Biju’s, as they would be
linked to academic institutions. They would have a narrower purpose than “a
better life,” through the new requirements and purposes ascribed to their schools
and education. And there is nothing to say that they wouldn’t benefit from the
generosity of their benefactors, and the goodwill of the new friends they met
abroad. Yet, at the same time, I can’t help but believe they would experience
similar difficulty acclimating. While in my thesis I phrase these issues
academically as “negotiating belonging,” or dealing with various forms of “racism
and exoticization” – I feel, at a very fundamental level, moving would simply be
hard. Thus, when I returned to school and to my thesis, which I had planned to
focus on South Asian Diasporic Literature, I couldn’t help reading my notes with
our own little Bijus from The Gandhi Ashram School in mind.
xi
Introduction
“I Read the News Today”:
On January 25, 2007, The Economist covered the climax of racist drama on
Britain’s popular, reality television show, Big Brother. Jade Goody, a long-time
member of Big Brother’s cast, had been eliminated from the show by an 82%
vote; viewers were reportedly disenchanted with Goody’s repeatedly racist
comments directed at Bollywood actress, Shilpa Sheety, and voted with their
consciences to oust the long-standing, admittedly ignorant, queen from her
throne1. Running adjacent to the column on Goody’s fall from the grace was an
article reporting a shift in British citizens’ conception of their national identity
and national culture. Though the article focused largely on the rising popularity
of an “English” versus “British” national identity, it also broached the question of
what it means to be “English”; and, while tea consumption and the “stiff upper
lip” did enter into The Economists findings, Englishness was reportedly seen by
many surveyed as an “ethnic, rather than a civic, identity.”2
Across the pond, in a ‘post 9/11’ United States, the flow of immigrants,
illegal or otherwise, into the country is an ongoing topic of national debate. From
The New York Times’ coverage of Minutemen phenomenon on the U.S.-Mexico
border3, to The Boston Globes’ report of anti-Muslim sentiment from some
1 “Jaded: Reality TV and Racism.” The Economist. Vol. 382, Number 8514. New York,
NY. January 25, 2007
2 “Waning: British Identity.” The Economist. Vol. 382, Number 8514. New York,
NY. January 25, 2007
3 Chamberlain, Lisa. “2 Cities and 4 Bridges Where Commerce Flows.” The New York
Times. March 28, 2007
1
House Legislatures4, the immigrant question has caused many citizens and
lawmakers to rethink their ideas of what it means to be ‘American.’ It seems, as in
England, despite the multiple ethnicities, religions, cultures, and ‘races’ of the
citizenry, the question of who belongs to the American national fabric remains.
Diaspora Space:
In light of these continuing debates concerning immigration, national identity
and belonging, re-examinations of immigrant and ethnic communities, often
referred to as ‘diaspora,’ have become increasingly popular and prudent. Khachig
Tololian, editor of Diaspora magazine, calls diaspora “exemplary communities of
the transnational moment.”5 In an increasingly globalized world, where labor,
capital, and resources are passed fluidly from continent to continent, diaspora are
created by relocation or displacement of immigrant workers and their
descendents.6 For these unskilled, immigrant laborers, middle class immigrants,
and the children of both groups, adaptation to the culture, society, and life in a
new ‘host’ country can be difficult, to say the least. So, in response to a new
cultural landscape and a tenuous sense belonging, as well as to maintain a
connection with a shared past, citizens of the world’s numerous disapora
replicate linguistic, cultural, and social norms, creating their own “cultural
4 Frommer, Frederic J. “GOP lawmaker fears election of Muslims.” The Boston Globe.
December 21, 2006.
5 Tololian, Khachig (1991) ‘The Nation State and its Others: In lieu of a Preface’,
Diaspora, 1(1): 3-7
6 Watts, Michael J. “Mapping Meaning, Denoting Difference, Imagining Identity.
Dialectical Images and Postmodern Geographies.” Geografiska Annaler. Series B.
Human Geography, Vol. 73. No. 1. (1997), 7-16.
2
space[s]” that mirror and often replace a past relationship to their land of origin,
or ‘home’.7
Yet, while diaspora are often treated in an essentialist light, as stable
immigrant communities, constituted by a certain social or cultural experience, for
sociologist Avtar Brah, the diaspora is also a dialectical tool to explain it’s own
emergence. For Brah, the diaspora carries: “explanatory power in dealing with
the specific problematics associated with transnational movements of people,
capital, commodities and cultural iconographies.”8 Rather than simply used to
denote a static community whose linguistic, social, and cultural patterns mirror
those of ‘home,’ Brah uses the diaspora as an illustrative lens to the underlying
social, historical, and economic conditions predicating contemporary migration
and diasporic identity formation (and reformation). For Brah the social issues of
undocumented workers, the violence originating from racial binaries, and the
globalization of capital, all fit into diaspora discourse, a dialogue she believes
goes beyond the common tropes of burkhas and arranged marriages.
To broaden the range of diaspora discourse, outside of the usual ‘minority
focused’ dialogue, Brah forwards the concept of “diaspora space.”9 Working from
Clifford’s idea of “the global condition of ‘culture as a site of travel,”’ Brah refutes
the idea of an inherent ‘nativeness’ in any diaspora discourse. In doing so, she
champions the diaspora space as a location where “boundaries of inclusion and
7 Nash, June. “Defying Deterritorialization: Autonomy Movements against
Globalization.” Social Movements: An Anthropology Reader. Blackwell: Malden, MA.
2005
8 Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. Routledge: London
and New York. 1996. 196
9 Ibid, 208
3
exclusion, of belonging and otherness, of ‘us’ and ‘them’ are contested.”10 Thus, in
a diaspora space that includes both immigrants and those perceived to be ‘native’
inhabitants of the host society, Brah creates room for a discussion on both how
the diaspora space develops, implicating, not only immigrants, but the host
society, in its formation. Rather than simply focusing on the ‘majority’s’ effect on
‘minority’ groups, she highlights the reciprocity in exchanges that occur between
groups, showing each side’s effects as double-edged. As Brah attests: “the
diaspora space is the site where the native is as much the diasporian as the
diasporian is the native.”11 In her analysis of English diaspora space, Brah shows
the confluence of African-Caribbean, Irish, Asian, Jewish, and ‘English’
diasporas, how their interpenetrations affect ‘native’ members of English society,
and how these interactions form what is present day English culture and
identity.12 Thus, it seems, as Brah would argue, the negotiation of ‘Englishness’,
and by extension ‘Americanness’ in the daily news, arise from these very same
dialectical exchanges and conversations played out in diaspora space.
Writing About ‘Home’
Recent years have seen a rise in the number of young and talented writers from
various diaspora. In tandem with the ‘transnational moment,’ writers like
Jamaica Kincaid, Michelle Cliff, Salman Rushdie, and Helon Habila have become
household names, denoting new wave of writers from postcolonial nations who
have seized the English language as their own. And, with an ever-growing, global
10 Ibid, 208
11 Ibid, 209
12 Ibid, 209
4
population who share migration, relocation, and displacement, as well as a new,
academic focus on issues of the ‘transnational moment,’ diasporic literature13 has
boomed to encompass a large slice of the fiction market.
Yet, while a plethora of diasporic literature floods publishers and
bookstores from all corners of the globe, no group has been more successful in
marketing their experiences than the Indian diaspora. From the first wave of
diasporic Desi lit, featuring titans such as Salman Rushdie and Anita Desai, to the
most recent boom in South Asian literature, including Booker and Pultizer
winners Kiran Desai and Jhumpa Lahiri respectively, the “ethnicity of the
moment” in diasporic fiction is truly Indian. 14 Roxanna Kassam Kara from Nirali
Magazine argues Desi success has stemmed partially from a Western
readership’s need for more than their “meat-and-potatoes” narratives. Yet,
Kassam Kara also readily acknowledges the interest in diasporic Indian
narratives has part of its origins in the demographic shifts in Western readership.
As Kassam Kara attests: “[Desi] writing also fills a need from second and third
generation desis who are demanding books that they can relate to.”15 With
growing populations of Indian Americans, Englishwomen from Pakistan, and
Bengalis living in Great Britain, themes that address and tackle the every day
13 I wish to preface the remainder of what I will term ‘diasporic literature’ under the
understanding that it is merely one of the many conceptual ‘boxes’ used to describe the work of
the following authors. As transnational poet and writer Sudeep Sen admitted in a conversation in
Delhi, he is often described as a ‘postcolonial, modern Indian, and/or transnational writer’ and
hates each categorization of his work. So, by no means to I want to pigeon-hole the following
authors and their work into merely one canon, the ‘diaspora canon,’ excluding them from the
broader categories of contemporary American or English fiction; but, rather, I seek to
differentiate them from their peers through focusing on the common, diaspora space themes they
address.
14 Kassam Kara, Roxanna. “Such a Long Journey.” Nirali Magazine. December 4, 2006
15 Kassam Kara, December 4, 2006
5
realities of racism and identity politics present in diaspora space are in high
demand.
Linking Fiction with Everyday Life
In the following pages, I aim to show how a small pool of contemporary, diaspora
space authors writing from England and the United States, use the South Asian
narratives to provide commentary, or a window to ongoing identity negotiation in
diaspora space. Though some postcolonial scholars, such as Graham Huggan, to
whom I will refer in chapter 3, argue fictional works should not be confused with
anthropological texts, I feel the diaspora space issues raised in much of South
Asian fiction closely mirror and are modeled on the actual experiences of living in
diaspora space. From the headlines in the daily news to assimilationist ideology
in present in ‘native’ English and American society, contemporary South Asian
fiction tackles themes of that involve all diasporians – ‘native’ and immigrant.
Through pairing recent novels by a handful of diasporic South Asian
fiction writers – principally Monica Ali, Hanif Kureshi16 and Kiran Desai, as well
as with Jamaican-British author Zadie Smith17 - with sociological,
anthropological and journalistic text, I hope to illuminate role diasporic South
16 It should be noted that Kureishi’s Buddha of Suburbia is a bit of an outlier in terms of the time
of publication. Kureishi wrote his witty and in-depth look at race, class, and culture in Britain in
1990, roughly 10 years prior to the works of the other 3 writers. Yet, Kureishi’s coverage of
commodity-function for both immigrants and ‘native’ suburbanites provides a crucial lens
through which to analyize the complexities behind assimilationist ideology. In this way, his text is
a important piece in this grouping.
17 Smith’s ethnicity obviously makes her distinct in a group of diasporic South Asian fiction
writers; yet, her ability to capture issues of identity negotiation and belonging for South Asian,
Jamaican, and ‘native’ characters in the diaspora space of London, makes her a fitting addition to
this study. Furthermore, her presence is a dialectical tool within itself, showing us that ethnicity
need not be the determinant for what makes a poignant and timely South Asian narrative in
diaspora space
6
Asian diaspora narratives plays in addressing the real and tangible diaspora
space discourse. Additionally, by showing how each writer uses dialectical
models, putting two seemingly fixed or stable ideas in tension, such as ‘native’
and immigrant, I seek to illustrate the way their texts break down fixed binaries
and not only incorporate, but further, Brah’s fundamental concept of the allencompassing
diaspora space.
An analysis of Zadie Smith’s first novel White Teeth begins the study, with
a focus on the paradox of biological purity and the helping-hand in contemporary
England. Then, moving away from often-taboo biological or racial politics,
Monica Ali’s Brick Lane is used to show how cultural assimilation is often viewed
as the new determinant for national belonging. Following Brick Lane, Huggan’s
analysis of “staged marginality” in Hanif Kuresihi’s The Buddha of Suburbia
provides a fitting lens to show how assimilation doesn’t necessarily lead to
acceptance and also illuminates the commodity-functions of all diasporians. And,
finally, through Kiran Desai’s focus on migrancy in The Inheritance of Loss,
diaspora space is seen to encompass not only identity negotiation in Western
economic center, but also in ‘homes’ from which migrants originate.
Each narrative provides a myriad of different themes relevant for study;
yet, in focusing on these specific works and sections that address identity
formation and a search for a sense of belonging to the national fabric, I believe we
as readers can see how diaspora space writers use their skills to both address and
comment on contemporary racial, cultural, and immigration ideology in England
and the US. Furthermore, though I have chosen to focus on specific books for
specific issues, each theme – ‘race,’ assimilation, commodification, and migrancy
7
- can be seen as occuring throughout diasporic South Asian narratives,
potentially providing a unifier to describe a broader, pan-South Asian experience
in and response to diaspora space. Finally, by viewing how authors of diasporic
South Asian fiction rework the standard notion of the diaspora, and “involve,” to
borrow a term from Zadie Smith, ‘native’ members of host society in diaspora
space, Brah’s thesis is not only upheld but strengthened.
8
Chapter 1: Belonging Through Purity
“European perceptions of the colonized were always contradictory, seeing the
latter simultaneously like themselves and inescapably [as the] ‘other.’”
– Alice L. Conklin and Ian Christopher Fletcher, European Imperialism
Constructing The Paradox
To sociologist Paul Gilroy, in the modern, English consciousness, constructions of
racial difference and purity are inherent in the formation of a national identity.
As Gilroy suggests, evocations of the “Island Race” and “Bulldog Breed” that run
central to British vernacular point to the perceived link between a “cultural” and
“biological” purity in national identity18. Postcolonial theorist Etienne Balibar
describes this propagation of the nationalist purity paradigm as “internal racism,”
constructed from the “external racism” of colonialism.19 As Balibar argues,
during the European colonial period, the ‘whiteness’ of in internal European
center was seen to denote superiority or purity, contrasting with the ‘darkness’ in
the colonies, or external space. Applying this external racism to the modern
milieu, Balibar, and in turn Gilroy, argue that former colonial powers, such as
Britain, striving to reclaim their sense of national greatness, have increasingly
advocated a stemming of racial dilution on the home front.20 From England the
racist policies by Parliamentary members, such as Enoch Powell, to the resulting
Immigration Acts of the late 60’s and 70’s, Gilroy points to the adoption of an
internally focused discourse on race in post-Imperial England.2122
18 Gilroy, Paul. ‘There ain’t no Black in the Union Jack.’ University of Chicago Press:
Chicago, IL. 1987. 44
19 Balibar, Etienne and Immanuel Wallerstein. Racism and Nationalism. Verso: London,
1988. 38
20 Gilroy, 46
21 Ibid, 47
9
Yet, running concurrently with the formation of this internal racism and
purity discourse in contemporary British thought has been the rhetoric of ‘help’
offered to those caught on the minority side of the binary. As Roger and
Catherine Ballard comment in their study on the formation and development of
Sikh community in Leeds, the children of South Asian immigrants to Britain are
often seen by their pre-dominantly ‘native’ teachers, community leaders and
parents as entrenched in a state of “culture conflict.”23 Subsequently, youth
action resulting from this perceived conflict is painted by majority culture as
rebellion against the oppressive culture of the parent generation.2425 And, while
Brah argues that adolescent rebellion is constituted from a myriad of different
sources, not simply along the East vs. West lines26, in cases that do play to this
common trope, the Ballards show that many ‘native’ counselors, responding to
these conflicts, intervene in an attempt to provide a counterbalance to
parents.2728
22 And, in the US, though less prevalent, intolerant edicts like those coming from anti-Muslim
congressman Virgil Goode show internal racism is alive an well, even in a supposedly, tolerant
and multi-ethnic government.
23 Ballard, Roger and Catherine. “The Sikhs: The Development of South Asian Settlements in
Britain.” Between Two Cultures: Migrants and Minorities in Britain. Baisel
Blackwell: Oxford. 1977.
24 Brah, 42
25 Hanif Kureishi’s provides an interesting rebuttal to this common trope film My Son the Fanatic.
Flipping the typical ‘rebellious and westernized son’ paradigm, Kureishi provides a narrative
where it is the son, Farid, who is traditionalist, religious, and fanatical about his ‘home’ culture.
Farid stands in stark contrast to his father Parvez, who not only enjoys liquor and jazz, but also
develops an affair with a prostitute-friend. In short, it this reversal of roles creates a fitting space
to analyze the common trope of the recalcitrant parents and culturally ‘confused’ children.
26 Ibid, 42
27 Ballard, 45
28 This presence of ‘native’ allies to the children of ‘oppressive,’ immigrant parents is not exclusive
to English diasporic space narratives; in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Namesake, on Gogol’s first day of school
his parent’s attempt to give him a ‘good name,’ Nikhil, are thwarted by Gogol’s teacher Mrs.
Lapidus. Following her own concept of what is necessary for individualistic grown, Mrs. Lapidus
allows five year-old Gogol to object to his parents wishes and a Bengali tradition by using his pet
name ‘Gogol’ as is school name.
10
It would seem through their actions aimed at promoting and enabling
individualistic growth, Ballards’ ‘helpers’ seek to aid in the assimilation of
second-generation children of immigrants into the national fabric. Yet, by pairing
these two seemingly incongruous activities, the propagation of internal racism
and the offer of a helping hand, a confusing paradox develops. Like their
ancestors in the colonies, immigrants and minorities in modern Britain become
byproducts of duplicitous actions that attempt to ‘civilize’ or ‘culture’ them, yet
simultaneously keep them outside of any sense of national belonging.
Furthermore, either as a result of these imposed binaries, or through the minority
communities’ own negotiation of identity, ‘othering’ is also adopted by
immigrants to differentiate themselves from what are perceived as ‘native’
peoples and culture.
Loving Contradictions
Using this paradox of ‘help’ and exclusion, in her first novel, White Teeth,
Zadie Smith shows how both ideologies can exist simultaneously. Smith’s ‘helper’
who illustrates this duplicitous rhetoric is self-righteous, white, middle-class
mother, Joyce Chalfen. Throughout White Teeth Joyce is framed as intent on
‘saving’ Millat and Irie, who she perceives as rebellious miscreants from South
Asian and Jamaican families.29 Following a drug raid that catches Millat and Irie
on the wrong side of the law, Joyce is recruited by the school headmaster to help
provide a “constructive” and “stable” environment for the pair.30 Through her
29 Smith, Zadie. White Teeth. Vintage International: New York, NY. 2000. 269
30 Ibid, 252
11
new role as a sort of foster mother, Joyce takes it upon herself to help both Millat
and Irie recover from the “damage” caused by their upbringing31.
Yet, while it seems Joyce truly does care, her sense of ‘help’ is defined in
scientific terms, resulting from both her career as a gardener and her husband’s
as geneticist. In searching for the root of Millat and Irie’s “pain,” Joyce diagnoses
both as if they were, in fact, species: “There was a quiet pain in the first one
(Irieanthus negressium marcusilia), a lack of a father figure perhaps, an intellect
untapped, a low self-esteem; and in the second (Millaturea brandolidia
joyculatus)….”32 And, as Joyce becomes increasingly attached to Millat, she goes
even further, by ascribing his own anger and confusion to: “ [a] slave mentality,
or maybe a color complex centered around his mother, or wish of his own
annihilation by means of dilution in a white gene pool.”33 While Joyce’s career as
a published gardener prepares her to make diagnoses on flora, her speciation of
Millat and Irie shows an increasingly active biological discourse underlying her
attempts to aid both of the troubled teens.
Outside of mere semantics, Joyce’s duplicity becomes fully evident during
a conversation following a celebratory barbeque for Millat and Irie. While
speaking on the genealogy of her “grand old family,” Joyce tells Clara, Irie’s
mother, that she thinks of Irie as part of her own family.34 Yet, following this
‘compliment,’ she returns to listing the famous intellectuals in the Chalfen
lineage, and announces an epiphany: “I mean after a while, you’ve got to suspect
it’s in the genes, haven’t you? All these brains. I mean, nurture just won’t explain
31 Ibid, 270
32 Ibid, 270
33 Ibid, 311
34 Ibid, 293
12
it.”35 Thus, it seems even while Joyce increasingly claims both Irie and Millat as
members of Chalfen family, she simultaneously casts them outside any real
belonging; while Millat and Irie are part of her family “in a way,” they can never
truly penetrate ‘Chalfenism.’
Nationalizing the Purity Discourse
The true subtext of Joyce’s two-faced statements is illuminated by Irie’s
description of the Chalfens as denoting “Englishness.” By equating her
encounters with the Chalfens, specifically entering their house as “crossing
borders, sneaking into England,”36 through Irie, Smith constructs her exclusion
from the Chalfen family and as a metaphorical exclusion from the ‘English
family.’ Thus, it seems through Irie and Joyce’s relationship, Smith speaks to
Balibar’s internal racism; by creating a scene where of national belonging is
constituted genetically, based in the “purity” of the Chalfen experience, Smith
shows that these two often contradictory ideologies of help and exclusion often
co-exist side by side, framing a paradox that situates minorities in contemporary
Britain outside of any true belonging to the national identity.
Yet, while Smith, Balibar and Gilroy ground this purity discourse in a
contemporary milieu, its roots lie far deeper in colonial philosophy. As
postcolonial scholar Ania Loomba comments: “one of the most striking
contradictions about colonialism is that it both needs to ‘civilize’ its ‘others,’ and
35 Ibid, 293
36 Ibid, 273
13
fix them in a perpetual state of ‘otherness.’”37 Following Loomba’s thesis, the so
called ‘White Man’s Burden,’ a relic of colonialism’s ‘external racism,’ can be seen
in colonial writing spanning the globe; as an Earl Grey eloquently stated in 1851:
“[the] British crown best way to maintain peace and spread ‘blessings’ of
Christianity and Civilization.”38 Like Grey’s philosophy, it seems Joyce’s
‘othering’ of Irie and Millat is also predicated largely through this ‘striking
contradiction’ or historical lens: through their time in the Chalfen house, Joyce
would like to believe Irie and Millat are becoming more ‘civilized’; yet, while their
higher test scores and adaptation to Chalfenist life put them peripherally in the
family, Joyce is reluctant to include them in the true, Chalfenist genealogy39.
Thus, while Joyce’s actions speak more to the internal racism of the
contemporary moment than to the external racism of colonialism, the
fundamental paradox of the helping hand and exclusive coupling remains the
same.
Equal Access to the Binary
By showing the timelessness of Loomba’s ‘striking contradiction’ we can
see that the ‘othering’ of members caught on the minority side of the binary is
quite common in South Asian diaspora space narratives. The discourse of purity
invoked in White Teeth can also be seen in The Buddha of Suburbia, My Son the
37 Loomba, Ania. Colonialism/Postcolonialism. Routledge: London and NY. 1998. 173
38 Hastings, Adrian. “Christianity, Civilization, and Commerce.” European Imperialism:1830 –
1930. Houghton Mifflin Co: Boston, MA. 1999.
39 Smith emphasizes this point, and it’s historical roots, through the narrative of Irie’s greatgrandmother,
Ambrosia. Tutored, civilized and impregnated with the child of British Captain
Durham, Ambrosia is held both outside her Jamaican roots and the White, church-going
community to which Durham belongs. Through addressing Ambrosia’s classical, colonial story,
Smith provides historical continuity to this seemingly timeless process of ‘othering.’
14
Fanatic, The Inheritance of Loss, just too name a few. Yet, it would be unfair to
claim that the purity discourse occurs with a singular trajectory – through
imposition by ‘natives’ on immigrants.
According to Loomba, outcasts from the ‘pure’ native community often
adopt this same binary as tool to distinguish themselves from Europeans. As
Loomba’s argues, those exiled from the national identity often seek a “liberation
[…that] hinges upon the discovery or rehabilitation of their [own] cultural
identity.”40 In White Teeth, through her use of Samad, the father of Millat, Smith
shows this stride towards liberation in Samad’s development of the binary of
Immigrants vs. ‘the West’: when Samad rants and raves to Irie about corrupting
forces of British society – forces he believes have ruined his hope, his children,
and, above all his sense of belonging – Smith shows he is reaching out to Irie for
understanding. As Smith states, while Samad speaks with Irie: “what he really
[wants to say to Irie is]: do we speak the same language? Are we from the same
place? Are we the same.”41 Given Samad’s failure with his sons, principally Millat,
the womanizing, pot-smoking gangster, Samad has lost hope in the importance of
cultural or genetic purity, and has switched his focus to that of a purity composed
of Us/Corrupting West. Thus, in speaking with Irie, Samad is searching for
‘liberating’ similarity in experience, developing a binary with ‘the West,’ as the
alien and corrupting ‘other’.
In addition to Samad’s cultural schism, through the nightmares of the
usually culturally sensitive Alsana, mother of Millat, Smith shows that liberation,
40 Ibid, 181
41 Smith, 337
15
or defiance, is also often viewed as maintenance of genetic purity. Responding to
her son’s attraction to white women Smith shows Alsana’s silent fear of genetic
“dissolution [and] disappearance.”1 As Smith writes:
Alsana Iqbal would regularly wake up in a puddle of her own sweat after a
night visited by visions of Millat (genetically BB; where B stands for
Bengaliness) marrying someone called Sarah (aa, where a stands for
Aryan), resulting in a child called Michael (Ba), who in turn marries
somebody called Lucy (aa), leaving Alsana with a legacy of unrecognizable
great-grandchildren (Aaaaaaa!)”42
Thus, whether as a response to a national binary discourse that excludes her, or
as an organic fear of dissolution of family and lineage, provided by Loomba as a
potential metaphor for “resistance” and opposition to the exclusive nation43,
Alsana has created her own binary of purity.
Conclusion
Through both Gilroy’s analysis of the coupling of biological purity with
contemporary British national identity we can view Joyce and Alsana’s actions as
illuminating this age-old process of ‘othering.’ Furthermore, through Joyce’s
paradoxical efforts to ‘help’ Millat and Irie and her simultaneous exclusion of the
pair from Chalfenism, analogized as ‘Englishness,’ the timelessness of Loomba’s
‘striking contradiction’ is clear. Finally, as a result of this exclusivity Samad’s
42 Ibid, 272
43 Loomba, 217
16
binary constructions of ‘West vs. East,’ points to the adoption of the binary in an
attempt of liberation from the purity paradox.
From Loomba’s analysis of colonial ‘othering’ to Brah’s discourse on the
landscape of contemporary diaspora space, it seems the constructing binaries of
purity spans the centuries. The language of ‘us and them,’ couched in racial,
ethnic, and cultural difference, is continuously built and deconstructed as the
national fabric shifts and changes with immigrant influx and ideological
transformation. And, though the passage of time has altered the content and
formation of the binary, it seems Balibar would argue that racial binaries,
constructed from biological conceptions of purity, have merely shifted to deal
with an increasing immediacy of difference; the distance between rulers and
subjects that was a feature of the colonial landscape has dissolved, and the
immigration of citizenry from post-colonial nations has brought those who once
were seen as physically outside the empire into the streets, supermarkets, and
living rooms of the post-imperial state.
17
Chapter 2: Belonging Through Assimilation
“The redefinition of racism…is understood no longer as merely ‘disliking
individuals because of the colour of their skin’ [but as] ‘preference for accepting
people with strong inclination to be assimilated into the British community.’”
- Ronald Butt, Ain’t No Black…
‘Culture’ as the New Black
The timeless purity paradigm, illuminated by Paul Gilroy, Etinnea Balibar, and
Zadie Smith, often dominates the discussion of national belonging in diaspora
space and diaspora space literature. From Kiran Desai’s commentary on the “half
‘n half crowd,” second-generation Indians in the US who have absorbed
‘American culture’ yet simultaneously cling to their Desi ethnic identity44, to
Great Britain’s Immigration Act of 1968, stipulating that immigrants needed at
least one British grandparent for citizenship,45 phenotype is an important
‘includer’ and excluder in diaspora space, identity politics. Yet, while Gilroy and
others point to ‘race’ as one method for defining national identity in post-colonial
center, culture and cultural assimilation have increasingly entered the fray as
determinants of one’s inclusion or exclusion from the national community.
Moving from a national identity based from phenotypically grounded
internal racism, Gilroy forwards the theory of journalist, Ronald Butt. As Butt
argues, a perceived disjunction between immigrant and ‘native’ cultures in
Britain fuels a new internal racism based not on the color of one’s skin, but,
44 Desai, Kiran. The Inheritance of Loss. Atlantic Monthly: New York, NY. 2006. 148
45 Gilroy, 44
18
rather, on her ability to assimilate to British culture and society46: use of the
English language, consumption of alcohol and meat, and adoption of rugged
individualist and capitalist philosophies are seen as new determinates of
belonging. And, with this reformatted rubric for identity negotiation, resistance
or adherence to ‘traditional’ British culture, beliefs, and livelihood become make
or break determinants to one’s ability to be included in the national fabric. 47
Belonging in Brick Lane
Moving away from a perceived, biological dichotomy, towards a cultural
distinction – Butt’s thesis provides a fitting lens through which to view Monica
Ali’s first novel Brick Lane.48 Set within the confines of a Bangladeshi family’s
experience living in London during the last quarter of the 20th century, Ali
constructs her narrative to show the emotional and philosophical ambiguities, as
well as anguish, arising from living between two distinct cultural and
psychological milieu. Ali chooses Nanzeen as her protagonist and anxious hero,
whose liberation from a fate-driven complex is shown through decades of
transformation and self-realization. Yet, while Nanzeen’s story plays to a familiar
(and popular) feminist narrative, the “subjugated Muslim woman”49 who rises
above the oppressive cultural and social rules controlling her life, her story,
oscillated against that of her husband, Chanu, speaks more to the differentiation
46 Ibid, 64
47 This is not to say that Gilroy believes in culture as exclusive or hermetically sealed authenticity:
Gilroy readily objects to such a classification, attesting that it is not “…an intrinsic property of
ethnic particularity, but a mediating space…” Thus, in speaking of national belonging as defined
the cultural assimilation of the Other, we are working from what Gilroy would hail as the false
notion of static culture.
48 Ali, Monica. Brick Lane. Scribner: NY. 2003.
49 Smith, 110
19
felt through resistance to or participation in assimilation. Through focusing on
Chanu’s failure to adapt to British society and his resulting hardships, rather than
Nanzeen’s liberation and success, the assimilationist ideology underlying
contemporary identity politics in Britain is illuminated.
Ali paints Chanu as the verbose, unsuccessful, aging husband of Nanzeen.
Chanu seems chronically incapable of keeping a job, and, until the novel’s end
when he packs up and flies back to Dhaka, he is hopelessly unable to follow
through on the majority of his numerous plans. Yet, regardless of what is
constructed as his ineptitude, Chanu’s nose for social commentary makes him an
essential character in Ali’s narrative. Attuned to the academic discourse on
immigrant condition, class issues, and contemporary racism, Chanu comes to
believe in a subtle racism “built into the [British] system.”50 Chanu links his
inability to win his council promotion, better his vocation, and attain success in
England with this subtle racism that couples him with every other Bengali “just
off the boat.”51 However, while he sees racism as the driving force preventing his
‘success’ in London, if Butt’s thesis is correct, it would seem Chanu misdiagnoses
which kind of racism he his up against.
Though Chanu is aware of the sociological discourses of racial politics in
contemporary Britain, he blinded by his own inner-Bangladeshi classism and
regionalism. Chanu’s stratification between his upper-class Bengali heritage and
that of the Sylhetis, with whom he feels he is unjustly grouped, distorts his
50 Ali, 47
51 Ibid, 18
20
perception of his exclusion from British society52; believing it is their shared skin
color, language, or assumed, collective “Bengaliness” that dooms them to the
racial backlash of white, English, racial hegemony, Ali allows Chanu to make a
critical misstep that blinds him to a new racism couched in “culture”53.
Assimilation or Defiance
In speaking of a shift from the racial politics of London towards a cultural
dichotomy, Gilroy cites Butt’s article discussing the Pereira affair. The Pereira’s,
an Asian family slated to be kicked-out of England due to immigration laws, were
hailed by their white, suburban neighbors as textbook British citizens. At the
suggestion of their relocation, their neighbors, friends, and supporters
campaigned heavily to The Home Office, the Daily Mail, and The Times to attest
to their fundamental “Britishness.” After a flurry of press, the Pereiras were
allowed to remain in England, inciting Butt’s commentary on a new form of
racism. Through his analysis of the Pereira incident, Butt revealed that no longer
was ethnicity, or classical conceptions of ‘race’, the cornerstone of British racism,
but rather the new litmus test was the willingness, or lack thereof, to be
assimilated into British society and ‘culture.’ Thus, according to Butt, for nonwhite
immigrants, one’s membership or belonging in British society hinges upon
52 In her book, Cartographies of Diaspora, sociologist Avtar Brah provides background for the
origins of anti-Sylheti sentiment. In the mid-19th century, The Sylhetis, poor farmers and laborers
from Bangladesh, were recruited by the British East India Company to work about ships as cooks
and galley-hands. They then became the first to settle in England, and shed their past lower-caste
identities to become successful restaurant and shop owners in 20th century England. In feeling
apart from the Sylhetis, Chanu is playing upon traditional caste structure.
53 This is not to say that his ethnicity or ‘race’ are absent from the prejudice he received, but,
rather, to show that his lack of success and belonging partially stem from a cultural disjunction. It
is the amalgamation of many racisms that form Chanu’s situation – this is simply one racism that
is often overlooked in favor of its more base relatives.
21
her readiness to subscribe to contemporary British social norms and adoption of
cultural tradition54.
If the Pereira’s are the hallmark of assimilated Britishness, Chanu is the
poster-child of resistance. Representing the early wave of post-WWII
Bangladeshi and Indian immigrants to England, most with aspirations to make
their fortunes and then resettle in the sub-continent, Chanu has little investment
in making a permanent residence in Britain55. Chanu attests that his two goals
upon coming to Britain were to become a success and to then return home.56 As a
result of his lack of connection to Britain, rather than adopting certain cultural
norms and acquiescing to the realities of living and raising a family in a foreign
land, Chanu seems in constant ideological conflict with British culture and
society. Chanu’s decisions to avoid trips to the pub with his boss, to enforce the
use of only Bangladeshi language in his house, and his treatment of London, his
home for over three decades, as a foreign tourist site, are all deliberate attempts
to assert his lack of implication in British diaspora space.
Yet, despite his attempts to separate himself from the British landscape of
which he is a part, until finally packs up and flies back, alone, to Bangladesh,
Chanu and his family are very much a part of English diasporic space. His many
arguments with Shanana over her use of English, body piercing, and her
disinterest in Bangladeshi traditions and writers point the contested space Chanu
inhabits. More importantly, with his lack of connection to Nanzeen, who has been
not only claimed by Karim, her lover, but also by an individualistic ideology that
54 Gilroy, 63
55 Ballard, 34
56 Ali, 18
22
places her outside of her previous subservient, fate-driven complex, Chanu fills a
critical role as Nanzeen’s foil: stuck in notions of return to home, and in defiance
of the a contemporary British culture he abhors, Chanu fills the ‘other’ side of a
binary where ‘assimilation’ and ‘rejection’ are the determinants.
Conclusion
Though Nanzeen’s narrative provides the reader with a “you-go-girl” story,
showing the triumph of feminist, individualistic, ideology over her oftenoppressive
husband, her success oscillated against Chanu’s failure provides space
for a discourse on belonging. Attempting to maintain the social and cultural
norms of his homeland Chanu is unable to survive in London. In contrast,
Nanzeen’s success is very much couched in her liberation from family, duty, and
all of the social and cultural rules she disavows. Through Nanzeen’s affair with
Karim, her decision to leave Chanu, and her new bread-winning role, she leaves
the tradition of a resigned, village-wife role and subscribes to a new cultural
landscape. In doing so, Nanzeen’s feminist narrative secures her a place, albeit a
tentative one, in what Butt’s new British cultural landscape.
As both Ronald Butt and Monica Ali show, the binary of cultural
assimilation and resistance is seen as one new barometer to measure acceptance
into the national community. Moving away from a binary centered in genetic or
‘racial’ purity, this new formation of belonging, along the lines of culture, adds to
the list of exclusionary practices that constitute national identity. Yet, as Chapter
three shows, not only is assimilationist ideology another divider, but like its
duplicitous predecessor, it comes imbued with its own paradoxes.
23
Chapter 3: Commodity-Function in Diaspora Space
“In all of Kureishi’s works to date, minority cultures appear to exist in an
antagonistic relationship with a white, mostly middle-class, mainstream even
as they are invited to provide it with a steady supply of self-indulgent ‘ethnic’
entertainment. Minorities are encouraged, in some cases obliged, to stage their
racial/ethnic identities in keeping with white stereotypical perceptions of an
exotic cultural order.” – Graham Huggan, The Postcolonial Exotic
A ReButtal
Though Butt argues that the reformation of exclusion from the national
community has deviated from the previous rubric, along racial or genetic lines to
a new cultural assimilation/resistance dichotomy57, cultural integration doesn’t
necessarily equate ‘liberation’ into collective identity; while the Pereira family
were readily absorbed into their rural Hampshire community, not every
immigrant or second-generation family is so lucky. In Ali’s novel, the riots
between “native” gangs and immigrant “fundamentalists” color the novel’s
ending, showing that while Nanzeen is committed to become a part of the Britain
her husband continuously rejects, she will still be subjected to the ongoing ethnic,
racial, and immigrant debates of diaspora space58. Outside of the fictional milieu,
as evidenced by the newspaper clippings referenced in the introduction, it seems
even those willing to integrate or already absorbed into national culture weather
the exclusionary binaries developed and propagated by the fellow citizens,
Congressmen, and members of Parliament.
57 Gilroy, 63
58 Ali, 363
24
Further confounding Butt’s thesis on assimilation as the new barometer
for inclusion are the narratives of second-generation children of immigrants,
many of whom identify more with their host country than their parents land(s) of
origin59. And, as Jhumpa Lahiri and Hanif Kureishi show, the second-generation
children of immigrants, born and raised in diaspora space, often bear what
becomes the baggage of their racial or ethnic identities60. From the cosmopolitan,
Nikhil of Jhumpa Lahiri’s Namesake, who is asked at dinner parties to speak on
the India that is his ‘homeland61,’ to Karim Amir, the young British actor of Hanif
Kureishi’s Buddha of Suburbia whose half-Indian ethnicity is commodified by
playwrights and directors62, it seems assimilation doesn’t necessarily lead to
equal footing in the national community. Additionally, and perhaps more
importantly, both characters show that while they belong to the national fabric
they do so from a tokenized or exoticized position.
Postcolonial scholar Graham Huggan refers to this exoticization and
commodification, as well as similar ‘performative’ narrative techniques used by
diaspora space authors to create an intentional and ironic exoticism, as “staged
marginality.”63 As Huggan argues, by developing characters and who display a
performative marginalization, such as Karim who assumes the role of as a black-
59 I’m British But... Dir. Gurinda Chadra. 1989. British Film Institute in association with Channel
Four Television. New York, NY. “Third World Newsreel,” 1990.
60 Though Huggan, who I will reference throughout the remainder of this chapter, draws attention
to the misuse of fictional narratives as anthropological texts, I see this jump form social
phenomena into the diaspora space narratives appropriate. Huggan’s discourse on “staged
marginalities,” would not be available without racial and ethnic marginalization to fuel diaspora
space literature. And, with the American history of blackface, minstrel shows, as well as an
ongoing space provided for the tokenization of ethnicity and ‘race’ in the acting and television
industry, the commodification of racial or ethnic narratives is highly plausible.
61 Lahiri, 157
62 Kureishi, Hanif. The Buddha of Suburbia. Penguin Books: New York, NY. 1990
63 Graham, Huggan. “Staged Marginalities.” The Postcolonial Exotic. Routledge: New York, NY.
2001. 99
25
faced Mowgli and Haroon, Karim’s father - who markets a contrived Indianness
in meditation sessions to suburban socialites - authors like Kureishi expose the
residual exoticism and racism present in diaspora space64. But Huggan further
elaborates on the role of Karim and Haroon, contending:
By simulating the conditions in which the dominant culture perceives
them, marginalized people or groups may reveal the underlying structures
of their oppression; they may also demonstrate dominant culture’s need
for subaltern others, who function as foils or counterweights to its own
fragile self-identity65.
Through using this deliberate, hyperbolic exoticism, Huggan argues that authors
such as Kureishi develop the discourse on the politics of national identity and
belonging. Furthermore, as Huggan alludes, this conversation illuminates not
only the minority’s shaky sense of belonging, resulting from his role as a
“commodity-function,” but also the tenuous sense of identity and belonging for
members of suburban, ‘native’ culture.66 By developing Buddha…’s ‘native,’ white
characters, whose narratives turn diaspora space discourse around to focus on
the fluid notions of British identity, Kureishi shows us an underlying, equalopportunity
commodification present in contemporary Britain. In doing so, he
shows that while exoticization is one form of commodification affecting diaspora
space narrative, notions of identity and belonging are just as instable for ‘native’
Brits as their minority counterparts.
64 Ibid, 88
65 Ibid, 88
66 Ibid, 99
26
Ted and Eva
Through using Huggan’s staged marginality as a lens, the hyperbolic narratives of
Haroon and Karim provide a window to the underlying commodity-function of
the identities constructed by Kureishi’s ‘native’ characters. From Karim’s Uncle
Ted, to Haroon’s lover, Eva, all of the secondary, ‘native’ characters of Buddha…
are pictured as searching just as much for their own sense of identity and
belonging as the Karim and Haroon.
With a successful business, and a seemingly steadfast sense of self, Ted,
the well heeled, middle-class uncle of Karim, seems an unlikely convert to
Haroon’s pseudo-Buddhist philosophy. As Karim accounts, it was Ted who took
him to football games, and who attempted to provide him the British childhood,
full with “fishing and air rifles,” that his father could not.67 Yet, Ted, very much a
symbol of the British, working middle-class, is the first of Kureishi’s ‘native’
characters to fall from a sense of stable British identity. With the loss of his wife,
Jean’s, affection, following an affair apparently driven by the materialism that
consumes her, Ted finds his life meaningless and completely devoted to work.
After speaking with Haroon, Ted is convinced to leave his life, “measured by
money,” and is “released” into his new existence, in which he eloquently declares
he will no longer follow money, but “[his] fucking feelings.”68
In this new released state, where material gain is traded for ‘feelings’, Ted
finds financial support and casual occupation on Eva’s renovation team.
Following the death of her estranged husband, Eva, the cultured, suburban,
67 Kureshi, 33
68 Ibid, 49
27
socialite, seeks to remake her life, starting with her suburban house. But Eva’s
renovations soon become a metaphor of her own remodeling. When she and
Haroon relocate from the Suburbs to London, Karim comments that Eva’s
rejection of her past suburban life is indicative of an attempt at reinvention. At
Eva’s carefully engineered, London housewarming party, Karim declares: “Now,
as the party fodder turned up in their glittering clothes, I began to see that Eva
was using the evening not as a celebration but as her launch into London […] I
saw she wanted to scour that suburban stigma right off her body.”69 It seems
mirroring her renovated houses and apartments, Eva herself becomes a locus for
a reinvention focused on her image of wealth and class. Like the Jean and Ted of
old, whose lives were consumed with materiality, Eva’s new rebirth focuses not
on her intensifying relationship with Haroon or simply a change of locality, but
how she was viewed by as part of a wealth/class grouping.
Busting Belonging
Both and Ted and Eva’s transformations throughout Buddha… point to what
Huggan refers to as a “queering of identity in Kureishi’s novel [that] punctuates
the illusions and undercuts the false assertiveness of those who see their
positions in society […] and their worldviews as more or less fixed.”70 71 Ted’s
69 Ibid, 134
70 Huggan, 99
71 Due to space constraints the narrative of Terry, Karim’s friend and fellow actor, doesn’t fit in
this discussion, yet his story is equally emblematic of the shifting identities and an underlying
commodity-function ‘native’ Brits also play. A staunch communist, Terry continually strives to
educate Karim on the coming ‘revolution,’ yet at the end of the novel he appears in role of a
policeman, a symbol of the law enforcement in the bourgeoisie state. While Terry’s final role is
brilliantly ironic, it also hints at his commodity-function as an actor. Like Karim he has little
leverage to protest the nature of the roles that pay his bills; so, as a result, his own marginality,
28
metamorphosis from an archetypical, work-driven, middle-class Brit, to a
carefree life defined by a nihilistic “Ted Buddhism”72 symbolizes the
deconstruction of the notion of static and stable ‘Britishness.’ Though Karim’s
director, Shadwell, describes the immigrant as “the everyman of the 20th
century,”73 the pre-breakdown Ted would truly seem to have been the everyman
of ‘native’ British culture; as a result, his polar shift in self character hints to a
destruction of any sense of a fixed and hermetically sealed British identity.
In addition to Ted’s transformation, Eva’s shirking of her suburban
position and culture for a cosmopolitan reinvention hints at the ephemeral sense
of identity in suburban intellectual circles. But, more than simply exhibiting a
shift in self, Eva’s constant transformations mirror what Huggan calls her own
“commodity-function.” Eva’s attempts to better her class situation by latching
onto the latest trends and fads points what Huggan refers to as: “oppositional […]
identitary categories, in which style and image become inseparable from the
social identity of their consumers, and fashionable possessions become a
paradoxical marker of enlightenment.”74 In other words, through Eva’s constant
pursuit of the fashionable, interesting, and exotic – highlighted by her infatuation
with Haroon – Eva’s own identity becomes defined by the fame she covets; thus,
Eva’s own sense of belonging becomes fluid and centered in the new, hip and
fashionable, which, as she shows with her constant reinventions, can change on a
dime.
addressed through the “queering” of his identity, shows his similar dependence on his own
commodification.
72 Kureishi, 102
73 Kureishi, 141
74 Huggan, 99
29
Conclusion
Through pairing Eva and Ted’s transformations and commodity-functions with
those of Haroon and Karim, a tenuous sense of belonging and identity is revealed
as a feature on both sides of the purity binary. Haroon’s staged marginality,
viewed through his manipulation of his presence as a guru-like commodity,
provides room for both Eva and Ted to enter Kureishi’s narrative, and exhibit
their own transformations. Furthermore, like Karim’s commodification, Eva’s
commodity-function shows her own tenuous sense of belonging in an everchanging
national fabric.
Liking each narrative is the reality of a commodification. As Loomba
comments, the Marxist theory on commodification argues that the spread of
capitalism would lead to the same blurring of identity with commodity-function
that we see in Kureishi’s narrative. Using Loomba’s own words it seems Buddha…
exhibits this Marxist prediction beautifully: “Marx emphasized that under
capitalism money and commodities began to stand in for human relations and
human beings, objectifying them and robbing them of their human essence.”75
Thus, in the case of Haroon and Karim, both subject themselves to exoticization
to capitalize on the wants and needs of a white suburban middle-class. And, Ted
forsakes his own commodification as a worker, whose life and happiness are
measured by dollar signs, for and a mindless subservience to Eva, who becomes a
metaphor for the blurring of a style and image with identity.
75 Loomba, 22
30
It seems in each of his characters Kureishi moves to make a statement, not
simply on race and ethnicity in the nation, but rather on how all function as
commodities in a larger capitalist narrative. Even Jamilia and Changez, Karim’s
friends who attempt to situate themselves outside a commodifying England by
joining a commune, are implicated in the broader discourse of late capitalism.
And, through this commodity discourse Kureishi moves the dialogue of
‘belonging’ in diaspora space away from binaries of purity and assimilation,
towards an understanding of the interconnectedness of each diasporian through
commodity function. So, as the novel ends, it appears Haroon is intrinsically
linked to Eva through more than merely their wedding vows; both Eva and
Haroon, as well as Ted and Karim, constitute their own sense of belonging in
British diaspora space through their commodity-functions.
31
Chapter 4: Widening the Scope of Diaspora Space
“We inhabit a world of diasporic communities linked together by a
transnational public culture and global commodities; not only has the old
international division of labor disappeared but so has the old identity between
people and places.” - Michael J. Watts76
Globalizing the Commodity-Function
By showing the underlying commodification presiding over the lives of his
‘native’ middle-class characters, in Buddha… Kureishi deconstructs a static
exoticizing binary present in London’s diaspora space. Yet, while Kureishi’s
narrative appropriately addresses commodification in the suburbs and
cosmopolitan London, in the age of global migrancy, commodity-function cannot
be seen as solely confined to the urban or even national landscape.
As mentioned above, from headlines in The New York Times concerning
Thai Guest Workers in North Carolina, to the BBC’s exposé on South Asian
“cleaners and builders” in Doha, an ever increasing transnational migrancy has
become a daily fixture in news media7778. As Anthropologist June Nash argues,
this reported boom in migrant labor reflects a worldwide restructuring of the
global economy with a focus on flexible, human capital79; through reformatting
the global economy to be based in cheap and flexible labor, actors such as
transnational corporations and sovereign states have helped transnational
76 Watts, 7-16
77 Greenhouse, Steven. “Low Pay and Broken Promises Greet Guest Workers in U.S.” The
New York Times. February 28, 2007.
78 Loyn, David. “Migrants ‘shape the globalized world.’” BBC News. December 18, 2006.
79 Nash, 177
32
relocation become a common and accepted component to today’s globalized
world. In doing so, these agents have legitimized a separation of work from place,
and created a worker who is now just as movable and expendable, if not more so,
as machinery. 80
This growth of a global flexible workforce, fulfilling a commodity-function
as flexible capital, is important for this study as it highlights an expansion of
diaspora space. Rather than simply focus on London or New York as the locus for
diaspora space dialogue, an emphasis on narratives of migration allows us to view
both the global economic center and the periphery as part of the discourse. As
workers bounce between ‘home’ and their site of work they bring conversions of
belonging and identity formation, as well as expectations of national identity, into
both localities. And, perhaps more importantly, the presence of global migrants
within fictional narratives helps to move discussion of commodity-function
outside of the performative milieu into a less hyperbolic and more tangible and
real exposé of global migrancy.
Crossing the Seas
One of the most recent and concrete examples of fiction that addresses this
widening of diaspora space and migrant commodity-function is Kiran Desai’s The
Inheritance of Loss. Located in both New York City and Kalimpong, India, Desai’s
second novel tackles a wide array of contemporary diaspora space themes, such
as racial politics, issues of belonging, and transnational migration. Through the
coming of age narrative of Biju, a native of Kalimpong seeking greater
80 Watts, 10
33
opportunity in the US, Desai uses migration to illuminate the under-lying
commodity-function of migrants in diaspora space. Additionally, by connecting
Biju’s experiences of migration and returning ‘home,’ Desai breaks what it is
commonly shown as a “home vs. diaspora” binary, showing the all-encompassing
nature of diaspora space.
Biju is at first presented by Desai as a naïve and impressionable, illegal
immigrant. Having attained a limited travel visa to the US, Biju lands in New
York City and quickly falls in with the New York’s illegal immigrant community.
After a few weeks, Biju’s visa’s expires, and he starts his new life as an
undocumented, restaurant employee, bouncing from hot dog stands, to steak
joints and generic Indian restaurants81. This new identity as an undocumented
restaurant worker - living in tenement housing, working long hours, and barely
getting by - helps to underscore Biju’s commodity-function in Desai’s novel. To
his employers, he is merely one more expendable worker, simply a form of
human capital. Furthermore, his commodity-function is also highlighted by his
implication in consumer cycle; as his fellow illegal-immigrant friends show, the
profits of their work are not seen in greater friendship, familial or national
connection, but new sneakers, big satellite dishes, and a thirst for bigger and
better commodities.
81 One of the best examples of the ubiquitous nature of Biju’s commodity-function occurs as he
begins working for the Harish-Harry at the Gandhi Café. Biju happens on the café as he searches
to find employment more inline with his morals; however, while the Gandhi Café doesn’t serve
beef and Harish-Harry claims Biju is part of his family, Biju’s exploitation and identity as a
worker continues. Harry overworks Biju and provides meager salary and rat-infested living
conditions. Furthermore, from Harry, Biju imbibes the “penny-saved, penny earned” mentality
and finds himself working towards Harry’s mantra of capital accumulation as life’s purpose.
34
Outside of Biju’s implication in the cycle of commodity production and
consumption, his sporadic employment – ever changing, due to immigration
raids, the racism of his employers, and his own moral convictions about serving
beef - shows Biju’s difficulty finding a home or community outside of work.
Furthermore, his lack of friendship or connection with his fellow workers points
to a greater irony Biju encounters in his pursuit of the American dream; with sole
goal of monetary gain and a increasing lack of connection to the migrant
community in New York, as well as his father back in Kalimpong, Biju, begins to
wonder if his migration to the US is really paying-off. As Desai shows Biju’s
capacity to think critically about his situation and respond accordingly
crystallizes when he finally evaluates his presence in New York: “What was he
doing and why? It hadn’t even been a question before he left. Of course, if you
could go, you went. And if you went, of course, you stayed…[but] Year by year,
his life wasn’t amounting to anything at all […].82” Through Biju’s own realization
of a growing separation from his father, his sole remaining family member, and
an absence of a greater purpose in his life, he comes to question his relationship
with ‘American dream.’ As a result, when he hears of trouble at home, in the form
of the 1980’s Gorkha Autonomy Movement, he decides his father is more
important than his ‘freedom’ and ‘prosperity’ offered in New York and returns to
Kalimpong.
Coming Home
82 Ibid, 268
35
Unlike many of the South Asian diaspora space works previously discussed,
Desai’s discourse takes place not only in the urban economic centers of London
and New York, but also in the remote Indian village of Kalimpong. And, while
Biju’s narrative is central to the novel, the story of his return is predicated by a
plethora of narratives from Kalimpong’s residents. Showing both the area’s
history and the social and political culture that led up to the ethnic conflicts, a
focus on Kalimpong dominates the later half of Desai’s text, and illuminates
many of the diaspora space features – exclusion, assimilation, and colonial
residue - previously discussed.
A staging ground for the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF), a
separatist ethnic movement that violently engulfed the Himalayan foothills in the
late 1980’s, Kalimpong is painted by Desai as a small Himalayan hill town with a
tumultuous history. As Desai writes, Kalimpong and its sister city, Darjeeling,
have been connected to the ‘outside’ world for quite sometime, passing hands
“between Nepal, England, Tibet, India, Sikkim and Bhutan.”83 Furthermore,
Kalimpong’s ethnic fabric, comprised largely of the descendants of relocated
Nepali workers and soldiers, points to a transnational migration from Nepal,
which occurred under British colonial rule84. As Desai shows, this relocated
ethnic population and their own integration and simultaneous exclusion from
Indian identity fueled the fire that became the Gorkha Movement.85 Thus, like
many of the “culture conflicts” addressed by writers in British and American
83 Desai, 9
84 Dasgupta, Atis. “Ethnic Problems and Movements for Autonomy in Darjeeling.” Social
Scientist, Vol. 27, No. 11/12. (Nov. Dec., 1999), pp. 47-68. 57
85 Desai, 128
36
diaspora space, we can see the historical roots of migration, and notion of who
does and does not belong, as predicating Kalimpong’s own ethnic conflicts86.
By devoting a large chunk of her text to Kalimpong’s own narrative,
particularly the story of the rise of the Gorkha movement, Desai shows us that
negotiation of national identity, belonging, and commodification are not only a
features of diasporic formation in the capitalist centers of London or New York,
but also in countries often considered on the periphery. Additionally, by bringing
Biju back to Kalimpong, Desai heightens this connection. Biju returns to
Kalimpong, laden with the fruits of his labor, literally, as the bearer of the
commodity. As Desai writes, before leaving the US, Biju loads up on:
“[…] a TV and VCR, a camera, sunglasses, baseball caps, that said “NYC”
and “Yankees” and “I Like My Beer Cold and My Women Hot,” a digital
two-time clock and radio and cassette player, waterproof watches,
calculators, an electric razor, a toaster oven, a winter coat, nylon sweaters,
polyester-cotton blend shirts, a polyurethane quilt, a rain jacket, a folding
umbrella […]87
In doing so, Biju represents a larger pattern seen in both anthropological studies
and in narratives of migrant labor, such as in Amitav Ghosh’s In An Antique
Land. Like Ghosh’s encounters with Egyptian migrants who set off to work in
86 This is best illuminated through the conversation between the aunty characters of Lola and
Noni on page 128. As their dialogue shows, some of the upper-class Bengali residents of
Kalimpong see the region’s disintegration as a result of “illegal immigration” – placing the blame
of the Nepali speaking population who was recruited to work in the tea plantations and army of
the British East India Company. Thus, like in England and the US, racism and an “us and them”
binary helps to fuel the fire of what became the Gorkha Movement’s essentialist push for ethnic
legitimacy and a degree of autonomy within India.
87 Desai, 270
37
Iraq and Saudi Arabia88, through Biju, Desai shows how migrants, who “work
outside” of their home countries, represent the liaisons to global capitalism. By
bringing back wealth earned abroad to their families and loved ones, migrants are
often seen as quintessential providers; yet, their ability to offer commodities,
such as refrigerators and TVs, as well as greater spending power, point to an
increasing implication in a consumer culture, driven by commodity proliferation
and consumption.
Conclusion
Through his drive to leave Kalimpong for ‘greater opportunity’, his experience in
each of his work situations, as well as his return home, Biju provides a window
the seldom-viewed world of the undocumented worker. A symbol of the
emigration fervor that inundates Kalimpong, Biju is but one of scores of poor,
young men desperately trying to acquire green cards to join the ranks of guest
and illegal immigrant workers in the US. Yet, while Biju’s succeeds in attaining a
ticket to New York, as Desai shows, his concept of the American dream and the
prosperity he seeks, are both eclipsed by his commodity-function. As the
producer and bearer of the commodity Biju’s narrative is emblematic of a
growing trend under globalization; as Nash, Watts, and Desai shows, with work,
as well as commodity production and consumption, replacing ‘home’ or family in
importance, commodification seems not merely a performative tool used by
authors, but rather a reality for migrant laborers.
88 Ghosh, Amitav. In An Antique Land. 322
38
Additionally, through viewing Biju as the bearer of the commodity, in his
return home to Kalimpong, as well as the through the narrative of Kalimpong’s
ethnic conflicts, we see that diaspora space is not limited to the nation state. With
global migrancy the new status quo, issues of belonging, national identity, racism
and commodification transcend national boundaries. Like the TV’s and foldout
umbrellas brought in Biju’s suitcase, concepts of prosperity and identity are
transported across boarders by migrants, widening the scope of diaspora space.
Thus, in an increasingly globalized world, we can no longer view merely London,
or New York, as sites where identity is contested and formed – what it means to
be American, or English, is a conversation formed not only on 8th Ave. or the in
Brick Lane, but also in Gleanary’s in Darjeeling.
39
Conclusion
For transnational author, Salman Rushdie, the contemporary canon of diasporic
South Asian fiction is largely populated with “Indias of the mind.”89 In Rushdie’s
preface to Imaginary Homelands - a collection of essays, poems and theory by
transnational authors - the father of diasporic South Asian fiction argues that
relocated writers, writing on their lands of origin, often reinvent and recreate a
tentative representation of ‘home’; as Rushdie clarifies, for Indian writers in
England, writing about India, facts, details, and images of their narratives of
‘home’ are warped, due distance between their authors’ pens and the subject
upon which they write. Rushdie furthers the point, arguing that this distance can
create an image of ‘home’ that is fantastical, hyperbolic and unique – a
representation of an imaginary homeland to which only the writer “belongs.”
Yet, while Rushdie seems to feel that distance for first generation
transnational writers heightens the fictitious nature of their work, he highlights a
benefit they reap from relocation: while diasporic South Asian authors, arguably,
lose an authority on ‘home,’ Rushdie argues the space between writer and sense
of place can provide valuable insight into the a current transnationality. As
Rushdie comments: “Indians in Briton [or in other diasporic communities] have
migration, displacement and life in a minority group at their disposal.” 90 Thus,
these transnational writers gain legitimacy in the increasingly pertinent discourse
of globalization, transnational migration, and life in diaspora space, because it is
89 Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands. Granta Books: London. 1991.
90 Ibid, 20
40
the geography in which they live, the most tangible experience that can inform
their work91.
In tandem with Rushdie’s hypothesis, I feel the works of diaspora space
authors writing on the South Asian narratives referenced above provide one of
the most accessible and complex views of life in diaspora space. All authors of
diasporic literature used in this study were either born in Great Britain or the US,
or emigrated later in life, so their real life experiences and observations seem to
be a fitting background and foundation for their diaspora space narratives. They
are involved, willingly or unwillingly, in the larger negotiation of the diasporic
identity. And, through their involvement their intimate connection with
transnationality these writers can most skillfully place both the conceptual
frames of ‘home’ and the ‘world’ in dialectal tension to help us rethink our own
ideas of nationhood and belonging. It is their own peculiar position, bridging the
divide between ‘home’ and ‘world’, that allows us to see the ever-increasing
relativity of hermetically sealed of static ideas of culture, society, and identity.
Finally through their position as witnesses and testaments to the fluidity and
relativity of cultural, resulting from interaction between what is considered ‘the
diaspora’ and the matrix of peoples, cultures, and prejudices of the ‘host’ nation,
authors of diasporic South Asian narratives can, and do, serve as a fitting liaisons
or messengers to the complexities of identity negotiation in diaspora space.
Thus, though some, like Huggan, argue that works of fiction cannot be
taken as Anthropological texts, diaspora space narratives provide an access point
91 And, again, I would argue this holds true for Zadie Smith. As she weaves South Asian identity
negotiation with British-Jamaican, Smith shows us that diasporic authors, whatever their origin
or ethnicity, share the similar experience of attempting to locate belonging in the nation.
41
to an increasingly relevant discourse on global migrancy, immigration, and
national identity. And while diaspora space narratives report an ever-intensifying
numbers of migrants passing the world’s boarders, so too do they indicate the
arrival of ‘home’ cultures and identities. As both diaspora space authors and the
news headlines show, as these home cultures or traditions come into contact with
a new culture of labor and goods, the continuous process of reformation of a
national belonging or exclusion occurs.
Diasporic South Asian fiction doesn’t merely report on social and cultural
changes and transformations, but provides a space for elaboration and
editorializing on the issues of the “transnational moment.” Through the ability of
the fictional narrative to develop a relationship with its reader, resulting from
character sympathies, and shared sense of space, the potential for diasporic
fiction to influence its readership is great. Thus, it seems writers such as Zadie
Smith, Monica Ali, Hanif Kureishi, and Kiran Desai, prove that fiction is a vital
window to understanding our own diaspora space – a space in which both the
immigrant and even the Caucasian, polish kid, writing this paper, are irrevocably
involved.
42
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