Aestheticism, Postmodernism and Displacement in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Fiction: A Novel View of the Search for Fulfillment by Obliviating the Past

Aestheticism, Postmodernism and Displacement in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Fiction: A Novel View of the Search for Fulfillment by Obliviating the Past
Author: Nadia Anwar
Publisher: diplom.de
Total Pages: 96
Release: 2017-05-10
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 3954899248

This research explores how the desire to break with the barriers of tragic past and seeking survival in another world gives a new perspective to Diaspora. It is not the existence in the new world which causes the disaster of individuals; rather it is the tragic past which destroys their lives totally. Moreover, the rejection of old habits, traditions and conditioning, and a merging with the culture of the new context is an existing issue of the postmodern transcultural world. The feeling of home is like something haunting and dark which frightens the people. Their quest of survival in a transcultural world, and their will to sacrifice their relations for that reason is an insight into situations of fast changing social fabric in India. The male and the female agency works in order to build an individual identity, and it constructs individual realities based on personal experiences. the old world and the changing perceptions of the new world.

Writers of Indian Diaspora

Writers of Indian Diaspora
Author: Bijender Singh
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2024-09-05
Genre:
ISBN: 103641017X

This anthology is a voluminous compendium of 37 unique and meticulously crafted chapters, each analysing a separate text by a pioneering Indian diaspora writer, with no repetition of authors or texts. This enhances the analytical depth and diversity of this unique anthology. Within these chapters, a carefully curated and evocative array of diverse themes and concerns addressed by these writers unfolds, offering a comprehensive exploration of the diasporic literary terrain. Assimilation and acculturation in the host country, as well as repatriation in the native country, can be challenging issues for the immigrants who have lived abroad for many years. These chapters attempt to elucidate the distinctive mosaic of themes, motifs, and perspectives embedded in the selected works of Indian diaspora writers. Unlike similar anthologies, this compilation is a painstaking, granular exploration of the literary oeuvre of Indian diaspora writers, highlighting an eclectic mix of genres and remarkable diaspora experiences. In an era characterised by increased migration and cultural hybridity, this anthology is an essential read for scholars, researchers, faculty members, students, and all connoisseurs of literature alike.

Becoming Abigail

Becoming Abigail
Author: Chris Abani
Publisher: Akashic Books
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2006-03-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1936070200

A breathtaking novella from the award-winning author of Song for Night and GraceLand. —A New York Times Editors’ Choice “Moody, lyrical prose reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s Beloved . . . Though the fictional Abigail exists only on the pages of Abani’s novella, her character will seize the imagination of everyone who reads her story.” —Essence Magazine “Becoming Abigail, a spare yet voluptuous tale about a young Nigerian girl’s escape from prostitution is so hypnotic that it begs to be read in one sitting . . . Abigail is sensitive, courageous, and teetering on the brink of madness. Effortlessly gliding between past and present, Chris Abani spins a timeless story of misfortune and triumph.” —Entertainment Weekly Tough, spirited, and fiercely independent Abigail is brought as a teenager to London from Nigeria by relatives who attempt to force her into prostitution. She flees, struggling to find herself in the shadow of a strong but dead mother. In spare yet haunting and lyrical prose reminiscent of Marguerite Duras, Abani brings to life a young woman who lives with a strength and inner light that will enlighten and uplift the reader.

On Black Sisters Street

On Black Sisters Street
Author: Chika Unigwe
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2011-04-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0679604464

On Black Sisters Street tells the haunting story of four very different women who have left their African homeland for the riches of Europe—and who are thrown together by bad luck and big dreams into a sisterhood that will change their lives. Each night, Sisi, Ama, Efe, and Joyce stand in the windows of Antwerp’s red-light district, promising to make men’s desires come true—if only for half an hour. Pledged to the fierce Madam and a mysterious pimp named Dele, the girls share an apartment but little else—they keep their heads down, knowing that one step out of line could cost them a week’s wages. They open their bodies to strangers but their hearts to no one, each focused on earning enough to get herself free, to send money home or save up for her own future. Then, suddenly, a murder shatters the still surface of their lives. Drawn together by tragedy and the loss of one of their own, the women realize that they must choose between their secrets and their safety. As they begin to tell their stories, their confessions reveal the face in Efe’s hidden photograph, Ama’s lifelong search for a father, Joyce’s true name, and Sisi’s deepest secrets—-and all their tales of fear, displacement, and love, concluding in a chance meeting with a handsome, sinister stranger. On Black Sisters Street marks the U.S. publication debut of Chika Unigwe, a brilliant new writer and a standout voice among contemporary African authors. Raw, vivid, unforgettable, and inspired by a powerful oral storytelling tradition, this novel illuminates the dream of the West—and that dream’s illusion and annihilation—as seen through African eyes. It is a story of courage, unity, and hope, of women’s friendships and of bonds that, once forged, cannot be broken.

Postmodern Literature and Race

Postmodern Literature and Race
Author: Len Platt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2015-02-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1107042488

Postmodernism and Race explores the question of how dramatic shifts in conceptions of race in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have been addressed by writers at the cutting edge of equally dramatic transformations of literary form. An opening section engages with the broad question of how the geographical and political positioning of experimental writing informs its contribution to racial discourses, while later segments focus on central critical domains within this field: race and performativity, race and the contemporary nation, and postracial futures. With essays on a wide range of contemporary writers, including Bernadine Evaristo, Alasdair Gray, Jhumpa Lahiri, Andrea Levy, and Don DeLillo, this volume makes an important contribution to our understanding of the politics and aesthetics of contemporary writing.

Where to Find Me

Where to Find Me
Author: Alba Arikha
Publisher: Alma Books
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2018-08-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1846884608

A gripping and poignant tale of chance encounters, tangled lies and painful discoveries, Where to Find Me is an inspiring account of how to face and overcome the effects of loss and tragedy in our daily lives. Hannah Karalis, a teenager living with her family in 1980s Notting Hill, becomes fascinated by her neighbour, Flora Dobbs, an enigmatic elderly woman who has clearly had an interesting past - but the improbable friendship that the two strike up is abruptly cut short by Flora's sudden departure from the neighbourhood. Eighteen years later, Hannah is astonished to receive a black notebook, which sets her on a quest to discover the truth and to confront the ghosts of an unresolved past. A gripping and poignant tale of chance encounters, tangled lies and painful discoveries, Where to Find Me is an inspiring account of how to face and overcome the effects of loss and tragedy in our daily lives.

Bourdieu and Literature

Bourdieu and Literature
Author: John R. W. Speller
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2011
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1906924422

Bourdieu and Literature is a wide-ranging, rigorous and accessible introduction to the relationship between Pierre Bourdieu's work and literary studies. It provides a comprehensive overview and critical assessment of his contributions to literary theory and his thinking about authors and literary works. One of the foremost French intellectuals of the post-war era, Bourdieu has become a standard point of reference in the fields of anthropology, linguistics, art history, cultural studies, politics, and sociology, but his longstanding interest in literature has often been overlooked. This study explores the impact of literature on Bourdieu's intellectual itinerary, and how his literary understanding intersected with his sociological theory and thinking about cultural policy. This is the first full-length study of Bourdieu's work on literature in English, and it provides an invaluable resource for students and scholars of literary studies, cultural theory and sociology.

Closure in the Novel

Closure in the Novel
Author: Marianna Torgovnick
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2017-03-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1400886619

Drawing on a wide range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century English, French, American, and Russian novels, Marianna Torgovnick demonstrates the variety and complexity of the process by which a work reaches an appropriate conclusion. Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Children of 1965

The Children of 1965
Author: Min Hyoung Song
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2013-04-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0822354519

Since the 1990s, a new cohort of Asian American writers has garnered critical and popular attention. Many of its members are the children of Asians who came to the United States after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 lifted long-standing restrictions on immigration. This new generation encompasses writers as diverse as the graphic novelists Adrian Tomine and Gene Luen Yang, the short story writer Nam Le, and the poet Cathy Park Hong. Having scrutinized more than one hundred works by emerging Asian American authors and having interviewed several of these writers, Min Hyoung Song argues that collectively, these works push against existing ways of thinking about race, even as they demonstrate how race can facilitate creativity. Some of the writers eschew their identification as ethnic writers, while others embrace it as a means of tackling the uncertainty that many people feel about the near future. In the literature that they create, a number of the writers that Song discusses take on pressing contemporary matters such as demographic change, environmental catastrophe, and the widespread sense that the United States is in national decline.