Assignment

1Bharati Mukherherjee and Shalini Akhil are famous writers. This section discusses
Bharati Mukherherjee‟s Jasmine (1989) and Shalini Akhil The Bollywood Beauty
(2005).




2Diasporic negotiations have a fascinating history in Indo-Pakistani (or South Asian)
diaspora in Britain. This is not surprising because Britain maintains centuries-old
connections with the Indian sub-continent. This part discusses the following works:
Hanif Kureishi‟s The Buddha of Suburbie, My Beautiful Laundrette, Samy and Rosi
Get Laid, My Son the Fanatic and Salman Rusdie‟s Fury,The Ground Beneath Her
Feet, Shame.



3The literature of the diaspora has evolved as a valuable corpus of writing As the Sri
Lankan diaspora spread across the globe. The writing of the Sri Lankan diaspora is
concerned with exploring such themes as the twinned notions of belonging and
alienation, the texture of memory, as well as the history and politics of the nation.






4This section discusses the following works: Yasmine Gooneratne‟s A Change of
Skies and Michelle de Krester‟s Hamilton‟s case


1Geographies of memory discusses Chandani Lokuge‟s Turtle Nest, Romesh
Gunesekera‟s Reef and Roma Tearne‟s Mosquito






2This part deals with Michael Ondaatje‟s Anil‟s Ghost and Gunesekera‟s Heaven‟s
Edge





3The personal as political discusses the following works: Ondaatje‟s The Running in
the family, Gunersekera‟s The Sunglass, Sivanandan‟s When Memory Dies,
Selvadurai‟s Cinnamon Garden, Gooneratne‟s The Sweet and Simple Kind,
V.V.Ganeshananthan‟s Love Marriage








4This part discusses Robert‟s July and Shobashakthi‟s Gorilla
1Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London in 1967. She is the daughter of Indian diaspora
couple from West Bengal. Her family immigrated to the United States when she was
two. Lahiri received several degrees from Boston University. She took a fellowship at
Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center. Lahiri has taught creative writing. In 2001,
Lahiri married Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush. Lahiri has won thirteen prestigious awards.
Her Major works are The Interpreters of Maladies, The Namesake, Unaccustomed
Earth and The Lowland.




2The Namesake discloses the story of the Ganguli family with particular emphasis on
the eldest son of the family, Gogol. Gogol is named after his father‟s favourite Russian
author. Growing in an Indian diaspora family in America, he starts to hate his strange
name.Gogol sets off his own path and iscover that the search for identity depends on
much more than a name.





3I have included the trailer of the cinematic representation of The Namesake in this
presentation.



4In reviewing Jhumpa Lahiri„s The Namesake, David Kipen writes that the
protagonist„s true identity is hung up between India and the United States and names
have always been contested territory in diasporic narratives. The Namesake centers on
a name: Gogol. Gogol„s story is dominated by the effect of his name on his
relationships to the family, friends, and lovers; in other words his affections. The
changes that he and his name(s) undergo are identified in six stages
1Naming a newly born baby is considered one of the prominent features of Bengali
customs. According to this Bengali custom Ashima„s grandmother in India is
authorized to name Ashima„s baby. She has posted a letter with the name to the US
but the letter fails to arrive. Ashima„s grandmother then falls into a coma and dies
without having revealed the name.




2All the Bengalis have two names, i.e. a pet name and a good name. Pet name is the
name, by which one is called, by friends, family members, and other inmates at
home.Every pet name is paired with a good name. Good name is used for
identification in the outside world. It appears on envelopes, on diplomas, in the
telephone directories and in all other public places. When the hospital refuses to
discharge the baby without a name, Ashoke resolves to name his son after his
favourite Russian author Nikolai Gogol because he believes that he was saved from a
train accident in India only because he was reading Nikolai Gogol„s short story The
Overcoat. But the name they give him is not a first name. It is the last name of a
Russian author Nikolai Gogol. Initially, Gogol is not aware of his name„s heritage. He
accepts it simply as signifying who he is for his family. When he enters kindergarten,
his parents decide to use the name ―Nikhil‖ as Gogol„s good name. But Gogol does
not want to use his new name. He insists on remaining Gogol:





3At school Gogol starts hating his name because he realizes that it belonged to the
mentally deranged Russian writer. Gogol does not want to identify with this heritage.
At high school his name becomes connected to affection for the first time when he
meets a girl. Reluctant to give his awkward name ―Gogol‖, he chooses ―Nikhil‖ on
the spur of the moment. Kissing her, he is excited, feels brave. In changing his name
he changes his overcoat and his behaviour towards others. He also changes who he is.
1Finding that with his good name and allegedly new identity he feels different, Gogol
legally changes his name when he goes to college. His new name ―Nikhil‖ allows
him to do things and test this feeling out. He first has sexual intercourse with a girl.
When his parents call him by his new name, he feels it is ―correct but off - key‖ just
as when they speak to him in English. He has a doppelgänger with two different
histories, identities, affiliations and affections. his new name permits him to create
several relationships. The more he separates himself from his family, the better he
feels with his WASP girlfriend. When his father dies, he leaves the girlfriend, and he
grows close to his family again.


2The penultimate section of the novel deals with Gogol„s marriage with Moushumi.
Moushumi knows both Gogol„s old and new names. She shares his cultural
background; yet the relationship begins to decline and they get divorce when
Moushumi humiliates Gogol by telling his secret (his name change) to her friends, and
then starting an affair. Significantly here Moushumi refers to Gogol only as ―her
husband.





3Gogol comes back to his family, but his mother is returning to India. The novel ends
with Gogol reading Nikolai Gogol„s story The Overcoat. Gogol consciously chooses a
name and identity from his ethnic background, but does not have absolute control over
it. As the narrator says: ―He had tried to correct that randomness, that error. And yet
it had not been possible to reinvent himself fully, to break from that mismatched
name. His marriage had been something of a misstep as well.


4The entire novel underwrites the impossibility of a monolithic personal and cultural
identity drawn from our various names and their meanings in the context of our
diverse affections
1The novel depicts the different attitudes, outlooks and directionality of two
generations in dealing with the problems in a foreign country. They face different
problems as the meaning of the culture differs for both the generation - the first being
directly related to his/her homeland and second generation forming an image of
culture based on the information transmitted by the first generation. This section deals
with generational differences in diasporic culture.


2Ashima feels homesick, uprooted, and lives in a world of nostalgia. For Ashima,
being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is sort of lifelong pregnancy—a
perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. Ashoke and
Ashima learn to celebrate some of the main festivals of American culture:
For the sake of Gogol and Sonia they celebrate, with progressively increasing
fanfare, the birth of Christ, an event the children look forward to far more than
the worship of Durga and Saraswati. Ashoke and Ashima‟s reaction towards
Gogol‟s friendship with Ruth is typical of the all first generation diapora. They
disapprove and reject all such relationship:You’re too young to get involved this
way,” Ashoke and Ashima tell him. They’ve even gone so far as to point out
examples of Bengali men they know who’ve married Americans, marriages that
have ended in divorce. Contrary to this the second generation diaspora want to
choose and adapt a profession of their own preference.


3In The Namesake, Gogol does not feel dislocated, because he is at home in America.
Nevertheless, the constant flux of travel in his life and the unsettled feeling that
accompanies his parents„ immigration creates, out of necessity, a desire to travel. Gogol
spends most of his life traveling away from his Cambridge home, either to India with
his parents or to New Haven and New York. But he desires a return to his Indian-
inflected parental home and his Indian community in Massachusetts after the death of
his father. The Namesake examines this existential confusion. The children move fluidly
between the private sphere of their Indian home life and the public sphere of their
American experience. Their behavior is akin to that of tourists in their home countries;
tourism, therefore, becomes a useful way of examining the psychic condition of the
cosmopolitan children of the first generation diaspora. In fusing the diaspora narrative
and the travel narrative - Lahiri enables readers to understand that a novel about a
diaspora family can also focus on how the children of diaspora have gained a certain
kind of power.
1Gogol is not only a tourist in that he approaches the flavors and sights of his native
America and his motherland of India. he is also a tourist in his approach to love.
Gogol„s taste in women becomes another metaphor in the novel linked to tourism.
Gogol samples several women from varied ethnic backgrounds. Gogol has three major
love affairs.




2Gogol„s first stop on his tour of American women takes place at Yale with a student
named Ruth. Ruth tells him that she is a child of hippies. ―[Gogol] cannot imagine
coming from such parents, such a background, and when he describes his own
upbringing it feels bland by comparison. Ruth is rendered as the minority. Gogol„s
romance with Ruth is exogamous.




3Maxine is an American-born Caucasian woman. Gogol desires Maxine„s mode of
living, her utensils, and her food. He is seeking a fantasy of upper middle-class
American life. When Gogol„s father dies, he returns home to Cambridge. At this point,
Gogol recognizes his romance with Maxine for what it was: a temporary experience.






4The relationship between Gogol and Moushumi is discussed in the section
Namelessness.
1 Channa Wickremesekera is a Sri Lankan born writer. He was born in 1967. He
migrated to Australia from Sri Lanka. He completed his PhD in History at Monash
University. His published works comprise two historical monographs: Best Black
Troops in the World: British Perceptions and the Making of the Sepoy 1746-1805 and
Kandy at War: Indigenous Military Resistance to European Expansion in Sri Lanka
1594-1818. He has also written three works of fiction: Walls, Distant Warriors and In
the Same Boat


2The novel Walls is about a Sri Lankan diaspora family, the Abeywickremes. The
Abeywickremes left Colombo and migrated to Australia for stability a bit more money
than Abeywickreme earned and above all to escape the uncertanities of their
homeland, to navigate in a secure zone and to ensure a promisable future for their
daughter Ishara. Ultimately they find their daughter turns out to be a lesbian.








3National identity is a person„s identity and a sense of belonging to one nation. A
person„s national identity results from the presence of national symbols, language,
national colours, the nation„s history, national consciousness, blood ties, etc‖
(Wikipedia). National identity in is an idea which constitutes home to Sri Lankan
diaspora. Subsequently, the displaced members from Sri Lanka brand themselves as
Sri Lankans. Though they are physically away from their homeland they could not
detach themselves from Sri Lanka emotionally: Shiranee was sorry to leave her
parents and brothers, and Abeywickreme his friends…Abeywickreme talked
frequently about Sri Lanka, its beauty and about his friends to everybody he
met, even some of his fellow taxi-drivers who seemed to make little sense of such
concepts as ―down south‖ and ―hill country..”
1Ethnic identity is primary for the first generation Sri Lankan diaspora community.
When there is a passionate articulation of Sri Lankan nation, the nation becomes a
community. The most important part of the Sri Lankan diaspora in Australia is the duo
nature of the community. It is divided into Sinhalese and Tamils. The Abeywickremes
and other Sinhala diaspora community in the novel harbor biases against Tamils. Dr.
Fernando„s oration at the barbecue party can be considered as a form of trans local
politics. They watched with terror as the Tamils sacked the Rajarata, demolished
the Dalada Maligawa and climbed the Sri Pada to defile the holy footprint before
sweeping down the mountains to trap the heroic children of the Ruhuna between
a wall of flame and the sea. A desirable change to this unfortunate climate is hard to
achieve until some improvement occurs in the overall relationship between the
Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka.

2. ―Class identity is a set of concepts rely on models of social stratification in which
people are grouped into a set of hierarchical social categories. The Abeywickremes
see themselves as a middle class, which bestowes upon them the title of respectability.
Andy, on the other hand, a beer-drinking, tank-top wearing, naturally ignorant
plumber. Andy is not seen as a suitable neighbor. ―Can't we ever find anybody
other than a drunken plumber for a neighbour?Abeywickreme said nothing.
Plumbers, truckies, cleaners. The neigbourhood was full of them. Abeywickreme
and Shiranee have a strong attachment with the country of their origin. One of the
major issues pertaining to them is to how to preserve Sri Lankan middle class identity
successfully.
3“Sexual orientation is an enduring personal quality that inclines people to feel
romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of the opposite sex
or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender”. In
Australia Abeywickreme„s only concern is to ensure that Ishara has everything she
wants. When Ishara announces that she is a lesbian all their hopes are shattered. They
are immersed into a non-specific state of uncertainty, how this disorientation creates
an emotional state of anxiety. For the first generation Sri Lankan diaspora same sex
relationship is associated with madness or disorder. Abeywickreme considers
lesbianism as an error. Shiranee views it as a typical practice of western culture.
Abeywickreme and Shiranee make several attempts to cure Ishara in a clinical way.
They try to reorientalize Ishara„s sexual orientationMost often the host culture is more
open about these issues. For example, ―Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT)
rights in Australia have gradually progressed to the point where anti-discrimination
laws protect LGBT people

3 conti.. The parents attempt many ways to rid Ishara of her wrapped ways: they strike
her, reprimand her and prescribe psychiatric therapy. Ishara responds carefully,
compassionately and firmly.




1Ishara decides to leave Australia because she believes that her sexual orientation will
be easier to be open about in the heterogeneity of Africa than it is on an island with
smaller interconnected Sri Lankan diaspora communities. In Africa anonymity is
possible and discovery is easy to avoid. The first generation diasporic parents are torn
between their love for their daughter and their own prejudices. The sacrifices
Abeywickreme and Shiranee have made for Ishara are numerous. Their life in
Australia has become a total failure.











1 cont “After coming all the way from Sri Lanka just for her. Giving up everything.
This is what we get.” They certainly did not want to see her become a lesbian and fly
to Africato feed the poor…Had they known this they would never have left Sri Lanka,
and would have been quiet content to risk bringing up Ishara amidst all the uncertainty
there.
1 Jhumpa Lahiri„s The Namesake and Channa Wickremesekera„s Walls chronicle the
lives of two generations of diasporas and compare the experience of the first
generation parents to that of their second generation children. Both novels deal with
pangs of displacement, processes of integration and accompanying loss of culture, and
the quest for identity of the second generation diaspora. The characters in these novels
face the opportunities and challenges of belonging to two different cultures. due to the
generation gap the first generation diaspora and the second generation diaspora inhabit
dissimilar spaces in the host culture, their understanding of rootlessness and
displacement can also be of parallel nature. In fact, both the generations„ predicament
is like the predicament of Trishanku.



1cont The first generation parents in these novels appreciate the opportunity of raising
their children in their respective hostlands; yet, they are suspicious and fearful about
the alien culture and its influence upon their children. The conflict between academic
and economic success in a foreign country and a lingering guilt-ridden conscience
born out of having left their roots behind never fails to haunt them. This issue of
loyalty and betrayal with regard to one's own culture is recurrent in the novels of
Lahiri and Wickremesekera.








1 cont.. Lahiri and Wickremesekera project diasporic location to be a mixed blessing:
it remains to be such a home that engages one in continuous negotiations, and offers
its unique challenges as well as possibilities. Rejecting any bleak vision of diaporic
experience, The Namesake and Walls epitomise both anxieties and excitements of the
characters in the new land.
1 Main aims and objectives of this research are to show how The Namesake and Walls
throw some of the core questions that concern the first generation diaspora and the
second generation dispora. How does the sense of displacement felt by the first
generation diapora affect their children?, how does the second generation negotiate
with their connections to their heritage, their parents' way of life while trying to fit in
with their friends? how should the members negotiate the present socio-cultural
challenges and preserve their own tradition?, What are the consequences of refusing to
make any compromise with, or of embracing western ideas and practices and turning
away from the ones that come here with them?
















Methdology: I have used the most common sources of data collection in qualitative
research methodology such as books, articles in journals, magazines and newspapers,
online periodicals, websites and webpages and review of documents.