What Is The Theme Of Diaspora By Longin Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth is comprised of eight short stories about different Indian families’ struggles in America, many of them going through the immigrant experience. The conflicts are with friends and family, and also with themselves, as each of them attempt to find their own identity along with fitting in with the rest of society. One of the causes of these struggles that because the families in the stories are mixed in terms of generation. Many of the adults in the stories were first generation immigrants from India, while many of the children were raised in the United States, which is the second generation. This led to blending of culture and at the same time, clashes between the immigrant mentality of living and the American mentality of living. In Unaccustomed Earth, Lahiri demonstrates to the reader the important influence of environment, specifically culture and how it impacts parental teachings, on the personality and development of an individuals’ identity, and how the actions and development of characters can affect one’s family and friends; the impact of environment and culture is shown especially by the characters and stories “Hell-Heaven” and “Hema and Kaushik”.

Moving to a new town can be hard, adjusting to a new house and meeting new people. Moving to a new country, however, can be far more difficult. Not only are there new people to meet, immigrants must adjust to an entirely different culture and language. Many find it hard to assimulate into the new culture, while still maintaining they customs and traditions of their old country. One author who writes about immigrants' struggles is Jhumpa Lahiri. She heard stories first hand of the struggle to adjust from her parents, immigrants from India. Some of her short stories are based on her parents' experiences. In the stories "This Blessed House," "The Third and Final Continent," and "Mrs. Sen's," Lahiri shows how the struggle of immigrants to

Whether it’s living or interacting in a new environment surrounded by unfamiliar and distinct people, one may feel culturally out of place. That is exactly the theme Jhumpa Lahiri describes in each of her stories, “Interpreter of Maladies,” “Mrs. Sen’s,” and “The Third and Final Continent.” In “Interpreter of Maladies”, we get a clear picture that the Das family, who are Indian-American, are the ones displaced here. We can see this throughout the behaviors that the Das family expresses in their trip around India, while Mr. Kapasi, an old Indian man, guides them through their journey, taking them to see India’s historical landmarks. In “Mrs. Sen’s,” the one culturally displaced is Mrs. Sen after being forced to leave India to go to America because of her husband’s job. Mrs. Sen has not gotten used to the American culture and misses her native land very much. Lastly, In “The Third and Final Continent,” the narrator, a young Indian man, handles his displacement very well. Starting with an arranged marriage in which he barely even knows the woman that he is getting married to, he leaves shortly after to establish a living in the U.S. where he finds the culture to be very distinct. Overall, Lahiri expresses the theme of how the characters in each story cope with their cultural displacement facing many obstacles and challenges.

At its most fundamental, diaspora focuses on the physical movement of people. However, comprehensive scholarship elevates “diaspora” beyond

No diasporic community manifests all of these characteristics or shares with the same intensity an identity with its scattered ancestral kin. In many respects, diasporas are not actual but imaginary and symbolic communities and political constructs; it is we who often call them into being.” (Palmer)

Forming a new identity in a foreign country is not an easy task. Immigrants usually face challenges to identify themselves. Identity formation is the development of one’s distinctive personality due to particular reasons such as new environment, new culture and conflicts. During the process, some characters from Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake either create or deny the bond with their own culture; some undergo conflicts among generations. Those processes reflect significantly in Ashima and Gogol throughout the book. The degree of assimilations determines to what extent the characters have formed the new identity in the new culture.

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.

Mukherjee uses contrasting diction to emphasize the difference of experiences the sisters had on immigration and the sacrifices they had along the way when faced with the American culture. For example, Mukherjee’s use of “maintain” and “self-invention” are contradictory to each other, but in the context “maintain” refers to her sister Mira and “self-invention” is directed to Mukherjee herself. In Mira’s case, she is very attached to her Indian culture and stresses about not letting the American culture take that away from her. The author’s purpose was to highlight the tenacious mentality Mira has on her culture. In contrast, Mukherjee's use of “self-invention” regards to her loosening her strict hold of Indian culture; the exact opposite

denied the company of her own parents after moving to America, her children independence, their need to stay away from her, is something she will never comprehend" (Lahiri,166). The act of cultral contrast amongst parents and offspring of the Diaspora people group can't be ceased by both of them since they both are born and raised in various cultures and in social orders.

In the story “Mrs. Sen’s”, Lahiri presents the struggles of assimilating into a new country and portrays how lonely and restricted immigrants can feel. She is able to do this through her use of the character, Mrs. Sen, a woman who is originally from India. Throughout the story we see how difficult it is for Mrs. Sen to assimilate to the lifestyle in America. Her days, usually consist of staying in an apartment while her husband teaches at a nearby university. Mrs. Sen’s Indian lifestyle still seems very prominent, all her furniture is still wrapped in plastic, the shoes are all lined in a bookcase by the front door, she refuses to purchase fish from the supermarket and she uses an abnormal blade to do her cooking. All of this illustrating how perhaps she is not ready to let go of her Indian lifestyle and assimilate. Mrs. Sen is representative of the struggles of assimilation, which often include feeling lonely and restriceted. She always relies on Mr. Sen, she barely knows anybody, she often misses her family and she cannot seem to make America feel like home.

Jews are the oldest diaspora who had no “homeland” for two millennia (Safran 2005). Despite attempts made by Christian evangelists to end the Jewish diaspora, they survived and developed a new relationship with the homeland. Historically, there has been historical meaning of diaspora for Jews- they were exiled because they were powerless, insecure and minority groups. The Jews diaspora who carried on its culture, maintained its ethnic or religious institution in America (hostland) are unwilling to surrender their identities and uphold a transpolitical relationship to the homeland or countries of origin (Safran 2005).

In the chapter titled “Reflections on Exile,” Edward Said discusses the different aspects of being an exile. His discussion of exile includes what it means to be an exile, the feelings that being an exile produces in individuals, exile in relation to nationalism, and the role of exile in the modern world.  Said first defines being an exile as a state of terminal loss. He states, “the achievements of exile are permanently undermined by the loss of something left behind forever” (173).  He then contrasts this terminal loss with the cultural impact that exile has had on the modern West.  He states that, “modern Western culture is in large part the work of exiles,” (173) and, “our age[...] is indeed the age of the refugee, the displaced

Immigrating to a new country drastically expands one’s cultural background. This culture change can be positive or negative and greatly affects the lives of many. The author uses her characters to tell the story of what it’s like moving into a new country and experiencing a whole new lifestyle. Jumpha Lahiri uses characterization of the characters to express to the audience the cultural changes people experienced when immigrating to a new country.

In this assignment, the strengths and weaknesses of the claim that migration creates global connections, will be discussed. This will be done by discovering what counts as migration and how it is valued, how global connections can be both positive and negative, about the concepts of 'diaspora' and 'translocalism' and how important they are when considering both migration and global connections. To enable the discussion of the subject matter, it must first be understood what is meant by the terms 'migration' and 'global connections', migration is used to describe the circulation of people from their country of origin into

Most Indian immigrants leave their original countries because of conflicts, acts of war, discriminatory politics and economic need. Therefore, they look for a better chance to fulfill their hopes and aspirations. Dreams, hopes and plans are all about the future, but the future is not always that rosy.