What is Diaspora Fiction? Essay

Peter Marin’s article “Toward Something American: The Immigrant Soul” explains his views on American life versus American culture and how they differ. He explains that in the average American life it is simply the task of finding and calling the place they now reside in home. “Home is for us, as it is for all immigrants, something to be regained, created, discovered, or mourned-not where we are in time or space, but where we dream of being”. (84) In other words, a new immigrant coming to America and a descendent to new world immigrant still experience the same conflict of American life. In the

Diaspora is the movement, migration, or scattering of people away from an established or ancestral home land or in this case a scattered population whose origin lies within a smaller geographic location. The poem “Diaspora” by Chelsea Dingman ventures through the journey of a Ukrainian girl leaving her country and the in the pride she receives from that journey and her heritage. The poem focuses around the hardships that are included in taking this journey and how she lose so much, the feelings of despair and weakness is all she has left.

Leaving one's own country and moving to another is one of the most difficult journeys anyone can make. In one's home country, he or she has a place, an identity that is

Belonging to place/culture is a major concept in ‘Migrant Hostel’ to show how the migrants use their background as a sense of affiliation and belonging. This can be seen through the use of a in “Nationalities sought each other out instinctively like a homing pigeon circling to get its bearings” This example shows how the migrants felt isolated and alone when they first arrived at the migrant hostel. As they came together the “sought each other out” through the use of nationally and culture which made them fit in and feel excepted into the place.

The changing environments throughout the ages have caused the movement of thousands of families out of their homelands. Whether forced to make such decisions or doing so by their own desires, all immigrants have had to survive the physical and psychological challenges encountered along the way. To speak about the experiences of all these different people using the same ideas and examples would be quite inaccurate. They all, however, had to live through similar situations and deal with similar problems. Many of them succeeded and found the better future they were looking for. Many others found only hardship and experienced the destruction of their hopes and dreams. All of them were transformed.

Moving around can be difficult for many people with new neighborhoods, new people, and new atmospheres. Alienation is an unavoidable aspect of modern life. There are a variety of ways to accommodate people in new places such as community gatherings and public events such as parades, festivities, and nearby school events. However, it becomes complicated when there are language barriers, cultural differences and internal belonging. Many immigrants are haunted by the sense of alienation when arriving in a new country, no matter how many obstacles they happen to overcome. Not only does it take a toll on relationships, but on internal struggles on what it means to come from, call home, and belong. To this present day, many people looking for new life in America have to face an overwhelming amount of difficulties in an attempt to create a comfortable life. Yet their sense of belonging will ultimately never feel real, and that struggle and last more than one lifetime.

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.”

Many second generation minorities from immigrant parents are driven subconsciously to conform to new culture and social norms. For foreign born parents and native born children integrating the two cultures they inhabit brings about different obstacles and experiences. In Jhumpa’s “The Namesake” the protagonist Gogol is a native born American with foreign born parents. The difference with birth location plays an important role in assimilating to a new society in a new geography. The difficulty for parents is the fact that they’ve spent a decent amount of time accustomed to a new geography, language, culture and society which makes it difficult to feel comfortable when all of that changes. For Gogol the difficulty only lies with the cultural norms imposed by his parent’s and the culture and social norms that are constantly presented in the new society.

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.

Chen Jenli made the selfless decision to move to New York for a few years to scope out a better life for both herself and her family. Good intentions do not always have good results. In her mind, Chen Jenli thought that this decision existed as a grand and noble one but, she fell into the trap of assumption. When she moved back home, she figured everything remained the same and all proved well again in her life. She stood blindsided and did not exercise mindfulness. She embodied acculturation and how it exists as “a process through which cultural patterns (e.g., values, beliefs, behaviors) change as a result of sustained

In simple terms, the Diaspora as a concept, describes groups of people who currently live or reside outside the original homelands. We will approach the Diaspora from the lenses of migration; that the migration of people through out of the African continent has different points of origin, different patterns and results in different identity formations. Yet, all of these patterns of dispersion and germination/ assimilation represent formations of the Diaspora. My paper will focus on the complexities of the question of whether or not Africans in the Diaspora should return to Africa. This will be focused through the lenses of the different phases in the Diaspora.

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

The question of identity is always a difficult one for those living in a culture or group, yet belonging to another. This difficulty frequently remains in the mind of most immigrants, especially the second generations who were born in a country other than their parents. Younger generations feel as if they are forced to change to fit the social standards despite previous culture or group. Furthermore those who wish to adopt a new identity of a group or culture haven't yet been fully accepted by original members due to their former identity.

Lj Smith, the author of the Vampire Diaries, wrote, “...but right now everything looks strange to me, as if I don’t belong here. It is me that is out of place, and the worst thing is that I feel there’s somewhere that I do belong, but I just can’t find it.” In 2016 65.3 million people are refugees around the world that are displaced throughout the United Nations. These people now have to adjust to a new life, in a new country, and a new “home.” Although some might believe that newcomers, immigrants, and refugees adjust and adapt to culture easily, Lahiri illustrates through Interpreter of Maladies the difficulties and issues men and women experience when adjusting to a place and culture where they do not feel at ease.