Anita Desai, the grand dame of Indian English literature, was born in Mussorie on 24 June 1937, of a Bengali father and a German mother. This identity of her plays a significant role in the portrayal of characters in most of her novels especially Bye, Bye Blackbird as it presents the cultural crises suffered by her main characters due to the East-West encounters. This novel is considered to be most intimately connected to her own experience as she herself has mentioned in an interview thus, “…of all my novels Bye, Bye Blackbird is the most rooted and experienced and the least literary in derivation (Dhawan 92).”
This novel details the traumas of cross cultural maladjustments, the fear and the anger, the turmoil and the tribulations, the shame
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As it is clearly illustrates, "he is perfectly aware of the schizophrenia that is infecting him like the disease to which all Indians abroad, he declares, are prone…He is not sure, any longer". Contrary to Dev, Adit is rather a well settled Indian with an English wife and at the beginning of the novel, he seems to be a seemingly contented individual. His attraction towards England is justified by his critically sharp remarks on his observation of India that has been ever disappointing as he says:
As he is compelled to leave India for better life style and consistent economy, he has derived a gradual compromise to put up with the mistreatment of emigrants and insults shot at him. He admires the Western life thus, “I like the pubs, I like the freedom a man has here-economic freedom! Social freedom! … and I like the Thames. I like old Ma Jenkins who cleans my rooms … And I like weekend at the seaside. I even like the
Throughout Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki and Into the Desert by Nancy Karakane, the characters undergo physical and emotional injustice which shape who they later become. In Farewell to Manzanar we learn about a seven-year old‘s first hand view before during and after camp Manzanar. The Wakatsuki family and Japanese-americans along the west coast were taken from their home and put into relocation camps. In this book we endure her issues in and out of camp and also the injustice that not only does she face, but also many other Japanese-americans.
Ashima is Gogol’s mother, who moved to America for her husband Ashoke after they were arranged for marriage. Ashima misses her family and life back in Calcutta, she has trouble setting in to the American lifestyles. “On more than one occasion [Ashoke] has come home from the university to find her morose, in bed, rereading her parents’ letters.” Ashima feels lonely and homesick. Ashima tries to keep Bengali tradition by always wearing a sari and a bindi in her forehead, and always cooking an Indian dinner. “For being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy — a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been ordinary life, only to discover that that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding.” (49) In America, Ashima is surrounded by people she does not know, and she does not quite feel that she fits in. There are new customs and a new way of doing
By recording the lives and recounting the traditional trails of an immigrant population, the novel produces in an artistic yet authentic literary piece the spiritual history of a people thereby providing them a distinct cultural voice. The stories in the novel practically served to support and confirmed the hardships and brutalities that the immigrant Mexican farmers faced at work. In the story, “That It Hurts”, one boy was expelled from school because he was Mexican. While the predicament of the Mexican migrant workers is comparable to the slavery of the blacks earlier on in the history of America, the novel depicts a young man’s struggle for self-identification which ended with a reaffirmation of his bicultural predisposition as well as his patrimony and allegiance with America. The novel did not necessarily represent resentment against the Anglo culture and resistance. People should reconsider the maltreatment of immigrant workers and the discrimination of ethnic minorities in general. For instance, the novel did not directly criticize the Anglo culture but only uses it for comparative discussion of differences aimed to
towards this changes throughout the story, however. At the end of the story, after his many experiences, he feels he must head out for "Indian Territory." He no longer feels like he can
Mukherjee opens her story by establishing a tone and setting. Mukherjee describes when she first moved from Calcutta to the United States. By doing this, she lays down the setting for her story. In the first two paragraphs, Mukherjee sets the tone by explaining how America is a myth of democracy and opportunity. This type of tone suggests the story will be about inequality.
In the introduction of the book, he goes through his own life and what he has gone through to get where he is in the present. He is a journalist turned novelist, and met many people and challenges on his way. The introduction is very technical with not much of a storyline like most fiction novels. In many instances, he alludes to the face of India as being happy and prosperous in opposition to the normal lives that most Indian people lead.
In this novel, the characters go through a perpetual struggle with self-acceptance and self-discovery. More often than not, the main character Tayo is conflicted with his own thoughts. Tayo, a struggling recent war veteran, cannot seem to fathom his thoughts between the past and the present. Not only has Tayo just come back from war, but also he has always had difficulty feeling close to his people. Being that Tayo is Native American and white, he was never truly as close to his ancestors as the rest of the people in his life, forming somewhat of an identity crisis for him. With the past as a constant nightmare for him, he struggled to proceed living his life. Unable to erase the thoughts of his gruesome past, Tayo feared that he would never get better.
For thousands of years, waves of immigrants continue joining the developed countries in the world, bringing with them the unique cultures, languages, and ideas. Over time, those unique values might be faded away with each generation because of the new culture exposition. The second-generation immigrants experience a cultural conflict between that of their parents and that of host society. Most of them are unable to preserve and empower their origin cultures. Many differences between the first-generation and the second-generation immigrants arise. Through the analysis of the mother in “Death of a Young Son by Drowning” and the Das family in “Interpreter of Maladies”, I would like to demonstrate the differences between the first-generation immigrants, who travel from other countries, and the second-generation immigrants, who were born and raised on the immigrated land. These differences include the purpose of being in the foreign land, the connections to their homelands, society’s view, and the culture differences.
Similar to many other authors during the late nineteenth century, Doyle seems to allot a whimsical and exotic quality to India and its people. India is characterized as a land of allure and extravagance when describing the souvenirs that various characters in the novel encounter or possess in their homes. The fact that these mainly aristocratic households have such artifacts in their
Moving to America, for many, has been a reason for opportunity and prosperity. Through persistence, hard work and struggles, they pursue to find success in achieving the ‘American Dream’. One of the major struggles is maintaining one’s traditional values and their individuality while assimilating and not forgetting who he or she really is. The narrator, Jayanti, in “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs”, by Chitra Divakaruni, illustrates a good example of how a person loses their individuality and self-identity to do whatever it takes to assimilate and fit into the society.
Kim gives a vivid picture of the complexities in India under British rule. It shows the life of the bazaar mystics, of the natives, of the British military. There is a great deal of action and movement, for Kipling's vast canvas painted in full detail. The dialogue in the novel makes use of Indian phrases translated by the author, they give the flavor of native speech in India. They are also touches of the native behavior and shrewdness.
The use of comparative imagery throughout “The Victims” suggests that divorce induces suffering on the family sphere. During the first half of the poem a resilient (strong?) metaphor is present. The comparison between the family’s reaction to the father’s misfortunes and the way society responded to the disgraceful retreat from the U.S.
This incident began his life long battle against all discriminations. Although he debated returning to India, his duty came first. “It would be cowardice to run back to India without fulfilling my obligation. The hardship to which I was subjected was superficial-only a symptom of the deep disease of colour prejudice. I should try, if possible, to root out the disease and suffer hardships in the process. Redress for wrongs I should seek only to the extent that would be necessary for the removal of the colour prejudice.”
E.M. Forster’s classic novel “A Passage to India” tells the story of a young doctor, Dr. Aziz, and his interactions with the British citizens who are residing in India during the time of the British Raj. Throughout the novel, the reader gets many different viewpoints on the people and the culture of India during this point in history. The reader sees through the eyes of the Indian people primarily through the character of Dr. Aziz, and the perceptions of the British through the characters of Mr. Fielding, Adela Quested, and Mrs. Moore. Through the different characters, and their differing viewpoints, the reader can see that Forster was creating a work that expressed a criticism that he held of the behavior of the British towards their Indian subjects.
A Passage To India by E. M. Forster is a rich, postcolonial novel delving into the possibility of sustaining a personal friendship between an English person and an "Indian" person. This topic is being discussed in the beginning of the novel at the home of Hamidullah, "... they were discussing as to whether or no(t) it is possible to be friends with an Englishman. Mahmoud Ali argued that it was not, Hamidullah disagreed, but with so many reservations..." (Forster 7) Aziz, who the novel centers around, has the disposition to just shut them out and ignore them and all will be jolly. Of course, later, we find Aziz does not shut them out and rather