scholarly journals Sexual Politics of the Gaze and Objectification of the (Immigrant) Woman in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moussa Pourya Asl ◽  
Nurul Farhana Low Abdullah ◽  
Md. Salleh Yaapar
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Immigrant Woman ◽  
The United States ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Indian Diaspora ◽  
South Asian American ◽  
Short Story Collection ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
American Society

Gayatri Spivak’s repeated accusations against the hyphenated Americans of colluding in their own exploitation is noteworthy in the context of diasporic writers’ portrayal of immigrant women within the prevailing discourse of anti-Communism in the United States. The woman in South Asian American writings is often portrayed as still stuck in the traditional prescribed gender roles imposed by patriarchal society. This essay explores Jhumpa Lahiri’s literary engagement with the contemporary racialization and gendering of a collective subject described as the Indian diaspora in her Pulitzer Prize winning short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies (1999). Specifically, it focuses on the two stories of “Sexy” and “The Treatment of Bibi Haldar” to analyse the manner dynamics of the gaze operate between the male and female characters. The numerous acts of looking that take place in these stories fall naturally into two major categories: the psychoanalytic look of voyeurism and the historicist gaze of surveillance. Through a rapprochement between the two seemingly different fields of the socius and the psychic, the study concludes that the material and ideological specificities of the stories that formulate a particular group of women as powerless, passive, alien and monstrous are rooted in the contradictory cultural and moral imperatives of the contemporary American society.

The Indian Diaspora in America as Reflected in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Fiction

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-211
Author(s):  
Leena Chandorkar
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Indian Diaspora ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
Indian Origin ◽  
Jhumpa Lahiri ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Immigrant Experience ◽  
American Society

Over the last 20 years, the Indian diaspora in the USA has suddenly come of age, numerically as well as economically. This growing confidence can be seen in the literature written by writers of Indian origin settled in the USA. Shunning sentimentality and overt nostalgia, this latter-day diasporic writing is laced with humour and a critical though affectionate tone directed towards their Indianness. Foremost among these voices is Jhumpa Lahiri. Pulitzer Prize winner Lahiri is the author of two novels and two short story collections. Deeply attached to her Indian heritage, yet wanting desperately to assimilate into the cultural melting pot of American society, Lahiri’s fiction is suffused with a complex biculturalism. With Jhumpa Lahiri’s fiction at the centre, my article will focus on this tug-of-war of alienation and assimilation that is at the heart of every immigrant experience.

Japanese Reinvention of Self through Hawai‘i’s Japanese Americans

2012 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. 333-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yujin Yaguchi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese History ◽  
Postwar Japan ◽  
Postwar Reconstruction ◽  
American Hegemony ◽  
Modern Japanese History ◽  
American Society

This article investigates the relationship between Asian American and modern Japanese history by analyzing the image of Japanese Americans in postwar Japan. Based on a book of photographs featuring Japanese immigrants in Hawai‘i published in 1956, it analyzes how their image was appropriated and redefined in Japan to promote as well as reinforce the nation’s political and cultural alliance with the United States. The photographs showed the successful acculturation of Japanese in Hawai‘i to the larger American society and urged the Japanese audience to see that their nation’s postwar reconstruction would come through the power and protection of the United States. Japanese Americans in Hawai‘i served as a lens through which the Japanese in Japan could imagine their position under American hegemony in the age of Cold War.

Fictions of Irregular Post-Soviet Migration

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Sadowski-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
The United States ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Abraham Cahan ◽  
Short Story Collection ◽  
Mary Antin ◽  
Cultural Productions ◽  
European Immigrants ◽  
Eastern European Immigrants

This chapter explores Sana Krasikov’s short story collection One More Year (2008) and Anya Ulinich’s novel Petropolis (2007) in order to develop a comparative approach to representations of irregular and unauthorized migration, a form of movement that has been largely identified with migrants from Mexico and Central America. The fiction by Krasikov and Ulinich represents ethnically and racially diverse protagonists from Russia, Georgia, and Uzbekistan, who arrive in the United States on nonimmigrant visas and become irregular or undocumented. These two works move beyond the themes of assimilation and family migration that dominated twentieth-century cultural productions by eastern European immigrants of Jewish descent, such as Mary Antin, Abraham Cahan, and Anzia Yezierska. Their work laid the foundation for a literature of assimilation to a middle-class white US racial identity that became fully available to European immigrants by the mid-twentieth century. The fiction by Krasikov and Ulinich emphasizes post-Soviet characters’ experiences of diminished access to the US labor market, residency, and citizenship rights, and thus positions itself in the larger context of contemporary US immigrant writing.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Himanee Gupta-Carlson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Asian American ◽  
South Asians ◽  
The United States ◽  
The South ◽  
South Asian American ◽  
Auto Ethnography ◽  
Race And Religion

The introduction introduces the central themes of the book and highlights its significance. It opens by exploring the wedding of the (a Hindu female of Indian ancestry) to a white, Christian male and places racial and religious tensions embedded in that event within the larger context of race and religion as organizing forces in American life. The introduction also describes auto-ethnography and discourse analysis, and discusses how these methods are used throughout the work. It also offers a profile of the South Asian American community in Muncie and of South Asians in the United States.

Animating Gandhi

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shilpa S. Davé
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
South Asians ◽  
The United States ◽  
White Masculinity ◽  
South Asian American ◽  
American Character ◽  
South Asian Americans ◽  
Asian History

This chapter discusses how the Indian American character is the accent or the suburban “sidekick” character to the dominant narratives of young, white masculinity that are prevalent in American culture. The representation and use of the historical figure Mohandas Gandhi in the MTV animated series Clone High revisits and challenges American representations of Asian Americans and South Asian Americans as model minorities. The use of the historical leader Gandhi as a teenage “geek” sidekick without recognition of how Gandhi fits into South Asian history and influences South Asian American communities shows how American stereotypes dwarf any other representation of South Asians or South Asian Americans in the United States.

Troubling the Cold War Logic of Annihilation: Apocalyptic Temporalities in Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

PMLA ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 130 (3) ◽  
pp. 599-614
Author(s):  
Gordon Fraser
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
First Nations ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Short Story Collection ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Cold War

Sherman Alexie's widely taught short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistight in Heaven (1993) ofers a largely unrecognized critique of the apocalyptic temporalities of United States militarism. War planners in the United States have frequently looked to the unrealized, potential holocausts of the future for a justiication of violence in the present. Alexie's collection—like much contemporary literature by Indian writers—unsettles this military logic by revealing how First Nations in North America and peoples around the world live with the consequences of a militarism that continually envisages impending antiAmerican violence as a means of justifying violence by the state. Alexie's writing provides a way of replacing the violent, futureoriented temporality of United States militarism with a “slow” temporality that acknowledges the un folding consequences of the past. Ultimately, this essay suggests a method for rereading “ethnic studies” literature with a view toward the interventions these texts make in mainstream United States culture.

Race and Religion in U.S. Public Life

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khyati Y. Joshi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Public Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
South Asian American ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
Laws And Policies

Religion is front and center in the early 21st century. The United States not only has experienced an explosion of religious diversity on its own shores in the past five decades, but also is functioning in a world where the 20th century’s duel of political theories has given way to political and social movements driven by or making use of expressly religious identities and themes. All the while, the United States is trying the perfect the experiment in religious pluralism started by the framers of the US Constitution more than two centuries ago. Today, most people would say we have “freedom of religion,” guaranteed by the First Amendment. In reality, religious freedom and religious pluralism are something we have been struggling with since the inception of this country for a variety of reasons, including the presence of white and Christian normativity that is enshrined in our laws and policies and extends religious liberties haltingly, belatedly, and incompletely. The experiences of three immigrant cohorts that are both racial and religious minorities in the United States (South Asian American Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus) illustrate the dynamic nature of religion in public life, and the unfulfilled promise of complete equality. By illustrating the complexities of how racial status and religious background have impacted the perception and reception of these immigrant communities, it offers untold stories and discusses the lessons they offer for those who aspire to a genuinely equal and pluralistic America.

Fighting the Fear: Everyday Terror in the American Short Story Collection after 9/11 A Study of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad and Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rae-Lee Kruger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Short Story ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Short Story Collection ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Cultural Form ◽  
Public Response ◽  
Story Collection

Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad and Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge represent the emphatic force that can be created within a short story collection and each contain at their core what has become a fundamental aspect of American literature since September 2001: terror. In A Visit from the Goon Squad and Olive Kitteridge, characters feel and attempt to cope with terror in their everyday lives. Both Egan and Strout contextualize individual terror against the broader national and cultural form felt by the United States after the events of 9/11. The presence of the void left by the Twin Towers is a potent symbol of terror within each collection, paralleling the characters’ experiences with that of post-9/11 America while highlighting the existence of everyday terror and providing a lens for character self-reflection. This essay focusses on two categories of terror that figure into both collections, terror of the unknown and terror of being alone, and how strategies employed by Egan’s and Strout’s characters to cope with this terror correspond to the American public response to the wider terror instilled by 9/11.

Belonging and boundaries in Little Guyana: Conflict, culture, and identity in Richmond Hill, New York

Ethnicities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 896-914
Author(s):  
Nazreen S Bacchus
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigrant Integration ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Ethnic Identities ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
South Asian American

Research on the assimilation of contemporary second-generation Americans has shown that ethnic enclaves are saturated with several cultural, religious, and transnational amenities that facilitate the process of immigrant integration in the United States. Missing from this research is a discussion of how middle-class, second-generation Americans use urban enclaves as a means of remaining attached to their ethnic identities. One such group with members who has achieved middle-class status and remained culturally attached to their enclave is Indo-Guyanese Americans of Indian Caribbean descent. This ethnographic study examines the ways in which second-generation Indo-Guyanese Americans use familial, cultural, and religious interactions in Little Guyana to create a sense of belonging and community. As the descendants of re-migrants, their multiethnic identities are complicating their assimilation in American society. Their experiences with racialization and social exclusion from white, South Asian American, and non-co-ethnic circles have pushed them toward developing their multiethnic identity. I use the term ethnic restoration to discuss how second-generation Indo-Guyanese Americans are using transnational ethnic consumption, religious institutions, and co-ethnic interactions to validate their ethnic identities and resist racialization. Their engagement in ethno-religious institutions in Richmond Hill is central to this analysis, as they embrace their Indian Caribbean identities more intensely after experiencing racialization. The findings of this research point to the need to understand why middle-class second-generation Americans are ethnically attached to urban enclaves.

scholarly journals Centennial reflections on Steinbeck's reputation in Slovenia

2002 ◽  
Vol 35 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 45-55
Author(s):  
Danica Čerče
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Grapes Of Wrath ◽  
Relevant Today ◽  
New Information ◽  
Sense Of Justice

Since the late 1920s and his first novel, Cup of Gold (1929), there has been little consensus about John Steinbeck's work, and he has often been praised or dismissed for the wrong reasons. In the wake of the novels with the sweeping reach and social consciousness of In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), and The Grapes of Wrath (1939), and despite the prodigious and startlingly diverse output of his career, Steinbeck was generally regarded as one of America's foremost engaged artists. However, the truth is that be was as much a postmodernist and a modernist, as a traditional proletarian writer. And though be made a significant contribution to the perception of the problems of his time by writing with empathy, clarity and a strong sense of justice about the downtrodden, the exploited, and the defenseless, which contributed to his immense public success, Steinbeck's novels lose none of their richness and power when removed from their historical context. With the human dilemmas on many levels of personal, philosophical, and socio-economic existence, and their deep humanistic, philosophical and ecological message, conveyed through numerous Biblical, Arthurian, and literary allusions, his works are as relevant today as they were when they were written.Appropriate enough, and given that this year marks the centennial of John Steinbeck's birth, celebrated with a year-long series of events taking place throughout the United States and paying tribute to the winner of the 0. Henry Short Story Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Nobel Prize for Literature by examining his legacy in American literature, film, theatre and journalism, and providing new information about the enduring value of his writing, this paper aims to capture the writer's reputation in Slovenia. The plan is to briefly analyse the most illustrative examples of Steinbeck criticism accompanying Slovene publications of his works; then to loosen the hold of deeply entrenched positions of Slovene reviewers, and to highlight the importance of considering Steinbeck's texts from new, insightful and politically unbiased perspectives of contemporary critical engagement. And last but not least, this discussion might hopefully induce Slovene publishers to new printings and translations of Steinbeck's works.

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