Diaspora and its Impact in the Select Novels of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Abstract

Diaspora is synonymous with new literature of immigration such literature springs from a thorough going engagement with the host country on the part of the immigrant. Immigrant literature captures the wrenching experience of relocation in an alien country for the immigrant. The important obsessions for the new literature of immigrant include nostalgia as well as guilt for the home country and intergenerational conflicts between immigrant parents and American born children. The experience of migration and living in diaspora have produced plethora of studies on the recent post-colonial literature, criticism and theory. The immigrant issues/problems have been explored by diasporic writers Hanishkureshi, Bharathi Mukherjee, Chitra Banerjee and other in their works. In recent years much critical interest has grown in the writings of Indian immigrant writers settled in the U.S. they raise their voice against the mental trauma, cultural alienation and identitycrisis of the dislocated people from their homeland India. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an Asian American with her ancestral roots in India. Living in the U.S. Divakaruni is more aware of the differences in culture which urges her to explore in all its essentials .Divakaruni believes that the immigrant Indian women feel the impact of the cultural schism caused by dislocation more immediately than men and that because of this she tends to look back even as she evolves on to a new being in the diasporic setting. The present papers concentrates on the difficulties and the problems faced by the immigrants as presented by the immigrant writer.