A Comparative Study on the Theme of East-West Encounter in Kamala Markandaya’s Possession and Anita Desai’s Bye-Bye Blackbird

There are many female writers, some known better than other. Female writes most of the time focused their stories in experiences or personal point of view on what is going on around them. Other women write fiction of unusual worlds and character that people can relate to with the struggle or experiences. Margaret Atwood the “Canadian nationalist poetess is a prominebt figure concerned with the need for a new language to explore relations between subjects and society“ (Omid, Pyeaam 1). Atwood wrote her first novel called, “The Edible Woman”; this first novel categorized her as feminist, based on the main character of a strong woman. In an interview with Emma Brockes, Atwood affirms, "First of all, what is feminism? Second, which branch of

Women in India were unaware of their miserable condition. It is in the post independence period the women’s quest for identity of her own commenced. The 20th century saw the shift from outer to inner sensibilities and no one can better understand a man or woman better a feminine writer. In modern English fiction a number of women novelists have arrived on the literary scene, they have set out making new forays in to the world of women. Nayantara Sahgal being a feminist writer has emphasized in her novels on freedom and a new definition of the New Women. Sahgal’s heroines are well aware of the injustice done to them in their marriage and they come out of this traditional bond.

Bharati married an American-Canadian fellow that would live in every part of North America with her over a span of thirty-three years. She became “opting to fluidity, self-invention, blue jeans, and T-shirts, and renouncing three thousand years of caste-observant, ‘pure culture’ marriage in the Mukherjee family.” Despite their differences, the sisters knew they were the only blood relatives they had on the continent, so they had regular Sunday morning calls where they were carelessly affectionate. During these conversations the sisters would have small talk rather than speak what was truly on their mind, yet they pity one another: Mira “for the lack of structure in [Bharati’s] life, the erasure of Indianness, the absence of an unvarying daily core.” Bharati “for the narrowness of [Mira’s] perspective, her uninvolvement with the mythic depths or the superficial pop culture of the American society.” It is clear that the two differ, however, in the ways in which they hope to interact with the country

Bharati Mukherjee discus’s the loss of cultural identity while being a visible minority by using the setting, characters and the plot of her short story “Hindus”. The author uses the plot for the main character to meet new people and have new experiences that leads to the ending of her better understanding herself. The characters the main character meets along the way in the short story written by Mukerjee are very important in the end in finding her identity. She also uses the setting to show the differences of culture and living standards of those living in India versus living in the Americas. The author used the setting, characters and the plot to describe and demonstrate the cultural and identity loss that may happen when one moves away from their country and their

Bharathi Mukherjee’s later novels Jasmine(1989), The Holder of the World(1993) and Leave It to Me(1997) comprised her last creative phase conveniently termed here as the phase of immigration. By now she has travelled a long distance in terms of thematic perception and character portrayal. Beginning with an expatriate’s uprooted identity in the early 70’s, her creative faculty explored the transitional dilemma of characters in early 80’s, whose acculturation bids were occasionally thwarted by the complexity of cultural plurality in the adopted land. However, after the publication of The Middleman(1998), the process of cultural acclimatization appears to be complete and the characters betray the confidence of an immigrant, almost a naturalized citizen, in facing the challenges of human life.

As Ashoke settled in the United States with his new wife, Ashima, as first-generation immigrants and started their own family, Ashoke insisted to her wife the life that America can offer to their children, from sufficient education and multiple possibility of a better future than a life in India. Ashoke’s principle towards life proves the conceptualized idea of America’s supremacy in different sociocultural aspects that again places the Asian Americans in the margin of the culture paradigm. Racism is another portion of the marginalization that is displayed in Nair’s film. A scene from the movie exhibits the perception of some Americans

When adapting to a new culture, many find it hard to assimilate into their new world while still holding on to their past life. Finding yourself in a new place with a new language and unfamiliar faces is challenging for immigrants. Jhumpa Lahiri, an immigrant herself, sheds some light on the Indian culture in her book, Interpreter of Maladies. She conveys many challenges that immigrants face when moving away from their homeland in a myriad of short stories. These short stories introduce similar themes of immigration and adaptation through different experiences. Two of Lahiri’s short stories, “A Temporary Matter” and “Mrs. Sens”, do a great job in showing similar challenges of cultural differences in two different ways. They introduce characters

Although the people from the West are generally represented to be bad due to the values they live up to, their attitude towards life and vices, it is shown in the film that there are some good people who restore our faith in the West. An example would be Christina who had an affair with Mohan before realizing that he is a married man with a child, and thereafter makes him realise his mistake and reunites him with his family. This shows that people from the West are not all about greed and lust as they do place

This battle between the likable, progressive character of Koly and her difficult, traditional mother- in-law causes unfair associations with India. The young women is so westernized as to become unfamiliar in her own land and Stewart assesses that “Koly seems to be the exception rather than the rule” (100). Stewart remains apprehensive about Whelan’s account of Koly and India because the author of Homeless Bird seems to prescribe to western attitudes that ultimately “establishes a platform for situating the other, the ones not like us” that effectively illustrates them as “abject and marginalized” (97). This is manifested in Stewart suggestion that Whelan succeeds in villainizing an entire country’s way of life that is (inaccurately) embodied in the unlikable mother-in-law, essentially becoming the contemptuous other (100).

Lahiri subtly presents the issue of Mrs. Sen missing her home in bits and pieces, allowing readers to catch onto the well of loss within her, which symbolizes Lahiri’s opinion on how difficult transition to a new world can be. Through the differences of cultural elements between India and the United States, Lahiri displays the difficulty of this transition. Mrs. Sen reminisces about how

Interpreter of Maladies is a collection of fictional short stories by highly acclaimed author Jhumpa Lahiri. The book illustrates the lives of first- and second- generation Indian immigrants as they face the challenges and struggles of living a culturally conflicted life in the United States. Lahiri herself was a part of an immigrant household. She was born in London in 1967. Her mother and father were both immigrants from India. They moved to the United States when she was two years old. Because her mother wanted her to grow up aware of her Indian, specifically Bengali, heritage and traditions, they frequently visited their relatives in Calcutta. Although Interpreter of Maladies is considered fictional, critics suggest that it is also autobiographical because most of them are adapted from her friends’, parents’, and acquaintances’ lives. This paper will focus on three specific stories in the book namely: When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine, Mrs. Sen’s, and The Third and Final Continent. The aforementioned stories deal with the struggles and challenges faced by most immigrants, specifically, how they deal with the clashing cultures of their old heritage and their new world. Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies illustrates that although migration entails struggles and sacrifices, the expatriate characters decided to move to a foreign land because of their hopes for a better future, but the strong sense of attachment to their Indian heritage made it difficult for some to adapt to their

Anita Desai has added a new dimension to the achievement of Indian women writers in English fiction through novels like Cry The Peacock, Voices In The City, Where Shall We Go This Summer, Fasting Feasting, Fire On The Mountain and many more.

To love and to be loved is elementary to human mind just as food, clothing and shelter are to the body. Family emerges as a powerful nexus in Indian society simply because it ensures the existence of somebody who needs to be loved and who reciprocates the love. All nine stories in Lahiri’s collection present characters who consciously or unconsciously crave for an adherence to a strong and stable root – a nation, a culture, a religion or a family– while longing to nourish and support a dependent soul within the familial institution; an intense desire for being rooted and being the root.

In writing his 1912 novel, A Passage to India, Forster found himself deeply troubled by the racial oppression and deep cultural misunderstandings that divided the Indian people and the British colonists, a reflection which is strikingly pertinent in his writing. He lamented that ‘‘the sense of racial tension, of incompatibility, never left (him)” during the days of the British Raj, between 1858 and 1947, and as a result, aimed to capture the intense social segregation from this period in A Passage to India. Through the interactions between Adela Quested, Mrs Moore and Ronny Heaslop, among others, and the prominent Indian figures in the novel, most notably Dr Aziz, the deep-rooted racial prejudices and popular sentiment of British superiority, becomes apparent.

Bharati Mukherjee is one of the accomplished diasporic writers. Her writing focuses mainly on women’s suppression, struggle to overcome the problems and attempt to attain identification. Bharati Mukherjee also depicts the cultural conflicts between the East and the West. When a person enters into a new culture from the old one, the conflict arises between the two cultures in the alien land. This paper explores how the female character, Jasmine is portrayed as protagonist in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine. Bharati Mukherjee portrays Indian woman as protagonist in all her novels and the character takes brave decision to emigrate which is the first major step of heroism. The character is portrayed with the capable of facing adventures and creates own happiness and identity, unyielding by conventionality. In Jasmine (1989),