The theories of post-colonialism, feminism, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, post-modernism, and new historicism,Academic, speculations on creative writings. They have been and continue to be widely adopted by literary scholars in their attempts to decode the meanings contained in various texts. This paper looks at the fiction of the South Asian American expatriate writer, Bharati Mukherjee, from a predominantly feminist and post-colonial perspective. Taking up a study of the novels, The Tiger's Daughter, Wife and Jasmine, the author enters Mukherjee's fictional world through the insights offered by literary criticism. This paper examines the predicament of women immigrants in America, as reflected in the lives of the women protagonists. Life in America, with its immigrant problems, turns out to be chaotic. The paper also highlights the confusion of gender boundaries, the creation of `mini narratives' (as against `meta narratives'), the treatment of the notions of hyperrealism and the historical implications of cross-cultural phenomena, as they emerge in Mukherjee's fiction. By using Bakhtin's notions of Carnivalism and Dialogic, the paper brings out the complexity of the fictional world of Mukherjee. Further, the domestic structure embedded in her fiction makes it accessible to a structuralist approach. Finally, the protagonists are seen to be Derridian in their `deconstructive' acts of survival.
Carole
Boyce Davies, in Black Women, Writing, and Identity: Migration of the Subject
(1994) observed, "Asian American literature is not a fixed, geographical,
ethnically or nationally bound category of writing". South Asian American
literature, as part of Asian American studies, has successfully emerged from the
stigma of acquiring political dimension. The quick succession of critical and
theoretical works of Asian American literature like Elaine Kim's Asian American
literature: An Introduction to the Writings and their Social Context (1982),
Amy Ling and Shirley Goek-lin Lim's Reading the Literature of Asian America
(1992), Sau-ling Wong's Reading Asian American literature: From necessity
to Extravagance (1993) etc., have failed to define South Asian American writings.
Asian American literature has tried to theorize the issues of Race, Ethnicity
and Nationalism. The erosion between literature and cultural theory has led to
the illumination of sociological conditions of the immigrant people. But when
it comes to South Asian writings, it is predominantly the women's response to
the changing cultural scenario across the world. Though Asian American literature
is seen as a varied response to the emergence of post-colonialism and the revival
of third world Nationalism, it is burdened with the feminist consciousness to
the larger extent. South Asian American literature is the commingling of Feminist,
Ethnic and Cultural theory. |
