Diaspora, women, identity, space, empowerment
This book by Dr. Shrimoyee Chattopadhyay investigates the complex role of space and movement in the representation of South Asian diasporic communities in contemporary diaspora literature, the question of female empowerment in neoliberal Western cities, and the impact of trauma on female identities. The author focuses on the literary and cinematic portrayal of South Asian migration to the UK and the US after the Second World War.
The literary narratives explored include Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘The Namesake’ (2003), Monica Ali’s ‘Brick Lane’ (2003), Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘Mrs. Sen’ from her collection of short stories titled ‘Interpreter of Maladies’ (1999), Chitra Divakaruni’s ‘The Mistress of Spices’ (1997), and Bharati Mukherjee’s ‘Jasmine’ (1989). The cinematic narratives include Gurinder Chadha’s ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ (2002) and ‘Bhaji on the Beach’ (1994).
In these selected narratives, the author discusses how the identities of female characters are transformed in neoliberal cities—defined as cities that are “loci for innovation and growth, and [are] zones of developed governance and local institutional experimentation” (Peck et al. 57). Investigating whether diasporic women acquire a sense of agency in these metropolises, the author’s analysis shows that although the promise of freedom offered by neoliberal cities is often deceptive, female characters become more empowered in the West compared to their positions in their home countries. Nevertheless, the degree of agency diasporic women acquire varies based on their intersectional differences, such as religion, marital status, and class.
The literary and cinematic texts emphasize how female identities are constituted in the interstitial space between “home,” the native land of the diasporic characters, and “exile,” the country of their destination. During displacement, South Asian diasporic characters experience uprooting and re-rooting as they encounter cultural norms different from their native traditions and customs. These narratives not only explore how the characters feel but also often reveal how they are perceived by others and the tensions that result from this clash.
The primary aim of this book is to showcase the ways in which diasporic female identities are constituted in Western neoliberal cities. The author studies the impact of Western locations on female identity formation at various scales, including private spaces, such as apartments, and public locations, such as streets. The book further investigates the subversive gestures diasporic women perform, such as mimicry, which challenges Western norms, as Homi Bhabha argues, and parody, which subverts the patriarchal norms of their home countries. It also maps the intersectional differences that characterize South Asian migrants and analyses how factors such as religion and marital status affect the agency of diasporic women.
Furthermore, the book examines how female protagonists recreate their cultural traditions in host countries, especially through cooking traditional foods, and how characters who escape traumatic events in their home countries cope with these experiences in the West.
