Sofia Cavalcanti

Indian English fiction is a major component of contemporary Anglophone literature (Ashcroft, 2013), and diasporic writing has had a central role over the decades before and after the turn of the XXI century. However, the complexity of the Diaspora concept has remained largely patriarchal and the intersection of gender and Diaspora has been a less explored literary manifestation (Rao Metha, 2015). Moreover, research has mainly focused on the problems of a whole diasporic community, thus overlooking the specific individual experiences faced by women in their geographical shift (Mohanty, 1991).
My paper aims at investigating the role of Indian women in the new homeland as protectors of their culture and faithful custodians of Indianness. Through the analysis of Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story Mrs Sen’s (1999), I will show how women are further marginalised in the new society as victims of a double displacement (Gopinath, 2003), both physical and metaphorical (Said, 1994). I will point out that the distance from the motherland does not coincide with a break with tradition. On the contrary, it entails an additional burden for women who must keep alive the notion of “home” while negotiating a new self within the Western society.
In conclusion, I will argue that we should think of Diaspora as a gendered process since the experience of migration for men and women is different: the former have the opportunity to look at the future by achieving self-fulfilment in their jobs and public life, while the latter remain in a condition of stasis, constrained in a constant tussle between homeland and host land.

References:
Ashcroft, Bill. (2013). “Re-writing India”. Writing India Anew. Indian English Fiction 2000-2010. Ed. Krishna Sen and Rituparna Roy. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Gopinath, Gayatri. (2003). “Nostalgia, Desire, Diaspora: South Asian sexualities in motion”. Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader. Ed. Jana Braziel and Anita Mannur. MA: Blackwell Publishing. 261-79.
Lahiri, Jumpa. (1999). “Mrs Sen’s”. The interpreter of Maladies. London: Flamingo.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. (1991). “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourse”. Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Ed. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Anne Russo, and Lourdes Torres. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 51-80.
Rao Metha, Sandhya (ed.). (2015). Exploring Gender in the Literature of the Indian Diaspora. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Said, Edward. (1994). Representation of the intellectual. New York: Pantheon Books.

Recent writings by Indian women authors suggest that Indian women emigrated to the West (mainly the U.S. and Canada) have been claiming their space in the diasporic place believing that a change of location is a significant opportunity for them to challenge and revise culturally-inscribed roles (Kaur, 2015). However, does Diaspora actually provide agency to women who emerge from a nationalistic narrative into a transnational experience or are they further marginalized in the new society? Despite the rise of a cross-cultural horizon of expectations by postcolonial women writers, Indian women are bound to their roots even in their new geographical location, where they embody the motherland and must fulfil men’s expectations of a faithful and reassuring reproduction of Indianness (Al Ali, 2010).
In my talk, I will argue that the dynamics of Indian postcolonialism (McClintock, 1995; Bohemer, 2005) have crossed the national borders, thus forcing women to the margins in the foreign land too, where they personify cultural symbols. Since they stand for the national territory (Enloe, 2000), their relationship with space is deeply metaphorical as I will show through the analysis of the novel Tell it to the trees (2011) by the Indo-Canadian writer Anita Rau Badami. Besides studying the women characters’ positions both in real and symbolic space, I will focus on how women accept, resist or modify men’s expectations in terms of identity preservation in a western environment.
In conclusion, gender is a necessary formative dimension in the diasporic land as it was for the construction of nationhood after the colonial period. Household continues to be the storage of tradition and, consequently, women’s natural place. Nevertheless, even in the Diaspora, such spaces are replete with possibilities of resistance and negotiation and they might be the battleground upon which formulating a new cross-cultural identity.

References:
Al Ali, Nadje (2010). “Diasporas and Gender” in Diasporas: Concepts, Intersections,
Identities. Ed. Kim Knott and Séan McLoughlin. London: Zed Books. 118-122. Badami, Anita Rau (2011). Tell it to the Trees. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada.
Bohemer, Elleke (2005). Stories of women. Gender and narrative in the postcolonial nation. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.
Enloe, Cynthia (2000). Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. Berkley: University of California Press.
Kaur, Monbinder (2015). “Blurring Borders/Blurring Bodies: Diaspora and Womanhood” in Exploring Gender in the Literature of the Indian Diaspora. Ed. Sandhya Rao Metha. New Castle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 68-88.
McClintock, Anne (1995). Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context. London and New York: Routeledge.

The in-between identity, mainly female, has been the focus of most contemporary English-language Young Adult novels by Indian diaspora authors (Superle, 2011). The hybrid self illustrated in those texts is metaphorically characterised as \u201cMasala\u201d, referring to the blend of spices used to add flavour to the Indian cuisine. However, within the genre at hand, little focus has been given to psychologically rounded female protagonists and masculinities have been almost invisible. An atypical approach to bicultural identities and gender performance has been adopted by the award-winning Indo-American author of \u201cMasala-marinated\u201d fiction Rajdeep Paulus, whose representation of girlhood and masculinity is realistic and inspiring for a young audience. After outlining the main features of Masala literature (Kumar, 2003), I will discuss to what extent Paulus departs from the standard portrayal of the \u201cNew Indian Girl\u201d (Bohemer, 2005; Superle, 2011) in her novel Swi...

Recent writings by Indian women authors suggest that Indian women who emigrated to the West (mainly the U.S. and Canada) have been claiming their space in the diasporic place, believing that a change of location is a significant opportunity for them to challenge and revise culturally-inscribed roles. In my article, I argue that the dynamics of Indian postcolonialism have crossed national borders, thus forcing women to the margins in the foreign land, too. Since they stand for the national territory, their relationship with space is deeply symbolic, as I will show in my analysis of the novel Tell It to the Trees (2011) by the Indo-Canadian writer Anita Rau Badami. Besides studying the women characters\u2019 positions in both real and symbolic space, my article focuses on how women accept, resist, or modify men\u2019s expectations in terms of identity preservation in a Western environment