Politics of In-between Spaces: Diasporic Travails in Jhumpa Lahiri's Fiction

Abstract

Today's world is more mobile and interconnected than ever before in the history of mankind. Fast-paced communicational advances and technological progress have accelerated the process of shrinking the entire world into a global village. Against the larger multicultural scenario, people of different ethnicities, cultures, religions and races criss-cross, clash and collide with each other. Migration has become the order of the day, and with large-scale intra and inter migratory movements across the globe, the concept of home acquires newer dimensions. The postcolonial era has witnessed the production of a number of literary texts by diasporic writers which aim at recreating. "Indias of the mind." South Asian diasporic literature is an effective documentation of the cultural and diasporic experience of the immigrants who are torn between the exigencies of self recognition in a hostile land and the loyalty towards ethno-religious traditions of the homeland. The pervasive trope of displacement found in these works focuses on the constantly changing nature of diasporic identities. This article proposes to undertake a postcolonial reading of Jhumpa Lahiri as a diasporic writer with special reference to her novels. In her novels, one finds the search for self-identity by characters who reflect the mood and sensibility of the Indians who migrate to the West in search of newer pastures, but in due course are forced to succumb to the tense forces of cross-cultural conflicts.