God of Small Things and Postcolonialism

In her essay “My Two Lives,” Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian American, explains the balance between the identities of the two countries inside her heart, as well as her psychological struggle between her bicultural identities. She describes herself as an Indian-American because she moved with her family from India to the United States when she was very young. However, confused with her identity through her growth, she feels that she doesn’t belong to either of the two countries because of its completely different cultures. When she is at home, she deals with her parents in an Indian way, which is strange compared to the American way that she come across outside. She says that she has a distinctive identity in spite of her Indian appearance

These stereotypical binaries of the childlike and savage Indian are directly linked to the narratives of white settler society and colonization. Essentially, by classifying all First Nation cultures under a monolith of a few stereotypes the white setter society claimed dominance over the First Nation peoples as they created the lens through which the First Nation’s history and identity would be read. The influence of the press and government policies lead to the acceptance of these stereotypes as defining truths about First Nations people which aided the settler societies in solving the Indian problem by destroying what it meant to be Indian. In this way, the stereotypes not only developed the idea of assimilation to save the Indian, but they

She explains her thesis by stating “Others who write stories of migration often talk of arrival at a new place as a loss of communal memory and the erosion of an original culture. I want to talk of arrival as a gain,” (360). The key points of the text include Mukherjee describing her transition between Calcutta and the United States, and what it means to be and American and how culture influences that aspect. The information in the text is significant; the people of America are a part of a melting pot, sometimes it is hard for them to find the distinction between American culture and their own. The information in Mukherjee’s story is clear and specific, unbiased, and is relevant to the purpose of the story. I believe Mukherjee has achieved her purpose of informing her audience about cultural differences; she presents certain strengths and weaknesses within the text.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s “The Namesake” examines an immigrant bengali family that has moved from India to America, and tries to hold their bengali culture while trying to accept American lifestyles. Ashima and Gogol each struggle with their cultural identity throughout Lahiri’s novel. The pressure of western society and the crisis of losing one’s culture and identity is demonstrated through the characterization and Gogol and Ashima’s relationships while living in America.

In the short story collection, Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, immigrants and memories have a very particular relationship because their memories surrounding a large part of their identities are derivative of diaspora. Somehow they are able to have this double consciousnesses, the memories and thoughts as immigrants, and the memories and thoughts as Americans. The time spent in their native country or in their host country cannot be replaced, even if the experiences immigrants encounter are negative. Even if the immigrant misses what they have lost migrating to another country, what is lost cannot come back. There is a constant battle between how much and how little memories do the Indian-American characters in the book have of being either Indian or American to be “Indian-American.”

The dominant idiom of Indian writing today is firmly entrenched in pain, anxiety of displacement, nostalgia, yearning to belong to roots, and so on. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss are two such novels that explore the tragedy of man on several levels using different perspectives. Both the novels are about averted culture-clash tragedies, homogeneity vs. heterogeneity, and about Indian sensibilities.

The book points out many different attacks on Indian culture. John’s adoption, legal or not, by his kind but misguided parents demonstrates the tragedy that can come from cross-cultural adoption. The experiences of Marie’s cousin Reggie, who has the tapes of his family’s stories stolen and co-opted by Dr. Mather (who has convinced himself that he is doing the right thing because the find is anthropologically valuable) demonstrates the wrongs done by intellectuals who only view other cultures in terms of what they can learn from them. Truck Schultz and the three enraged college students demonstrate how quickly the underlying distrust of

In the novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part time Indian”, author Sherman Alexie shares a compelling story representing racial issues among communities and families in cultural areas today, and a boy’s journey to find who he truly is, while being torn between two cultures. In this novel the main character, young Junior finds himself truly understanding that he is more than just an indian. In order to know more about the plot behind the novel, author Alexie takes the reader into Junior’s perspective to bring the story to life and let the reader understand how racial issues along with family problems make a play into today’s society. The novel shows a countless number of situations Junior encounters that impact his life throughout the novel.

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

A person’s heritage and cultural identity may be lost when moving to a new country where the culture is different and other cultures are not easily accepted. In the short story “Hindus”, Bharati Mukherjee uses setting, characters and the plot to discuss what it is like to lose your cultural identity while being a visible minority in America. Mukherjee uses the plot to describe the events that take place in the main characters life that lead her to realize how different the culture and life is in the America’s. She also uses the characters as a way of demonstrating how moving away from one’s culture and heritage can change a person’s perspective and ways of thinking. Mukerjee also uses setting in her story to identity the physical differences in culture between living in India and America. Alike the setting and characters, the plot helps describe the loss of culture with a sequence of events.

Mukherjee’s aim is to enlighten the immigrants through Jasmine, an exemplar in the novel. Mukherjee believes in order to for them to become a “real’ American, immigrants must disregard their cultural memory and past.

In conclusion The irony shown in this book about corruption, oppression of the poor, reality of India vs. the images foreigners have of India help portray our understanding of this novel. The corruption shown in the book is the teacher stealing the student’s money and the school inspector getting a question that he asked wrong. The reality of India vs. the images foreigners have of India is shown in the book there was framing involved and no doctors in government hospitals. last but not least is the oppression of the poor is

The immigrant experience affects families in a unique manner wherein ethnicity, and therefore, identity becomes something continuously negotiated. Jhumpa Lahiri’s contemporary novel, “The Namesake,” beautifully illustrates the complexities of generational culture clashes and the process of self-individualization over the course of this experience. Lahiri challenges the often-one-dimensional approach to ethnic identity by allowing readers an intimate and omnipresent look into the internal struggles of the Gangulis, a first-and-second-generation Bengali family, following their relocation to America. The novel incorporates a heavy presence of reading, and the abundant representation of books and documents throughout it are vital to its

Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is a modern example of postcolonial literature and is one of the most influential pieces of its genre. Postcolonial writing presents important themes and lessons of justice, equality, and freedom that can be applied to present times. It reminds us of how important our freedoms are and why we need to protect them. The colonized write about their exploitation and show how there is persecution in their colonized society. Postcolonial authors use specific methods to undermine their colonizers and reveal their backward logic. Things Fall Apart has various examples of meta-narrative, decolonization struggles, and colonial discourse worked in throughout the novel. Chinua Achebe’s writing styles showcase these techniques to subvert his European colonizers.

The opening of the story begins with the return of Rahel to Ayemenem. Other significant scenes include the burial of Sophie and the case where the family members are reluctant to acknowledge Ammu and the twins. It is worth to note that during the time burial, Rahel had the view that Sophie was alive. Nonetheless, the events that unfold throughout the story can be defined as being based on the need to explain some themes. One of the themes relates to the position of the family. The author uses different concepts to develop Ammu at the beginning, in the middle, as well as at the end of the story. Some of the relationships that were explored by the author include the connections between brother and sister, grandparent and grandchild, and mother and child among other groups.