Re Inscribing Identity: Resistance, Memory, and Diaspora in Non Native Writings

Abstract

This thesis attempts to trace postcolonial representations of identity, memory, resistance, and diaspora via a postcolonial reading of selected contemporary women's novels. More specifically, this thesis explores the ways in which contemporary female authors of Arab, African, and Asian origins; notably Diana Abu-Jaber, Laila Halaby, Jhumpa Lahiri, Joan Riley, Kiran Desai, and Elizabeth Nunez, try to deploy identity re-inscription in the diaspora. This study implies a pluralistic conception of social, political, and cultural agency in contemporary postcolonial narratives. The selected literary works operate at various levels: “home” re-definition and identity re-fashioning of immigrant communities in the diaspora to probe the boundaries of Said’s notion of Self/Other and the limits of Bhabha’s hybridity where cultures get incorporated. This study also traces representations of women’s subalternity along with the discourses of diasporic consciousness, stereotypes, and Otherness. This thesis is a reflection on the immigrants’ cultural navigation, where the concept of hybridized identities or “the grey zone”, gives a cultural provenance in the selected non-native writings.