Migrating Mindsets: Womanhood, Culture and Ethnicity

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to present the upliftment of Indian Diaspora, Culture and Ethnicity through women writings and to show how efficiently women writers have penned down the struggles of women who left their homelands and are living abroad. We attempted to throw some light on the works of one of the very talented gem of women writers, Nilanjana Sudeshana better known as Jhumpa Lahiri, who focused upon the Diasporic writings.

At the beginning, we will discuss the meaning and origin of Diaspora, the trajectory of culture and ethnicity along with our point of view which is put forwarded and supported through the works of Jhumpa Lahiri. We have tried to examine the topic, especially from the perspective of women characters and prominently those which took shape from the pen of the renowned women writer Jhumpa Lahiri, to discuss and expand our idea.

Since women have played vital roles in the society in every sphere so the women writers too have left their marks in the field of literature through their writings, they have taken up the challenge to portray the mental challenges of female characters which comes after experiencing the dislocation, alienness and the actualization of a life of exile, so we will elaborate our idea with this point because we believe that women are treated as expatriates in their homeland in a way because they move from their maternal land, at one point of time in their lives, to settle in their marital homes, so when the situation comes when they need to move from their homeland to an unknown territory, leaving their motherland behind for the sake of studies and mostly to get settled with their families after marriage in countries like the U.S.A., U.K. or Canada etc. they find it difficult to survive initially due to the difference in culture, language, cuisine, community and moreover due to the difference in perception too.

We will conclude the paper with the analysis of the mindsets of Jhumpa Lahiri's characters through which she tried to portray how the people who migrated from India hold on to their cultural heritage and reshaped their identities and posited new social linkages.