Writing Diaspora In The West

In this bold intervention into the understanding of the diasporic experience within cultural studies, McCarthy challenges a critical position emergent over the last thirty years (what he calls the 'new marginalism'). He confronts the liberal orthodoxies that prevail in this area, exposing contradictions in the thinking of its major theorists.

" . . . this is no doctrinaire tract but rather a concerted attempt to look at important cultural problems from a fresh perspective. . . . Chow's book is an excellent example of its type."—Discourse & Society "I believe that Rey Chow has written a powerful set of essays which offer a critical strategy for approaching questions of otherness and other societies by forcing us to constantly reassess our position." —Harry Harootunian Writing Diaspora questions aspects of cultural politics, including the legacies of European imperialism and colonialism, the media, pedagogy, literature, literacy, sexuality, intellectual labor, the uses and abuses of theory, and popularized notions about "others."

About the Author Dipak Giri- M.A. (Double), B.Ed. - is a Ph. D. Research Scholar in Raiganj University, Raiganj, Uttar Dinajpur (W.B.). He is working as an Assistant Teacher in Katamari High School (H.S.), Cooch Behar, West Bengal. He is an Academic Counsellor in Netaji Subhas Open University, Cooch Behar College Study Centre, Cooch Behar, West Bengal. He was formerly Part Time Lecturer in Cooch Behar College, Vivekananda College and Thakur Panchanan Mahila Mahavidyalaya, West Bengal and worked as a Guest Lecturer in Dewanhat College, West Bengal. Along with this book on Indian Diaspora Literature, he has also edited eight books on Indian English Drama, Indian English Novel, Postcolonial English Literature, New Woman in Indian Literature, Indian Women Novelists in English, Homosexuality in Contemporary Indian Literature, Transgender in Indian Context and Mahesh Dattani. He is a well-known academician and has published many scholarly research articles in books and journals of both national and international repute. His area of studies includes Post-Colonial Literature, Indian Writing in English, Dalit Literature, Feminism and Gender Studies. About the Book The anthology Immigration and Estrangement in Indian Diaspora Literature: A Critical Study attempts to study diasporic sensibilities in writings of Indian Diaspora writers. The book mainly focuses its study on the sense of displacement and dislocation rising due to immigration from homeland to hostland as found in writings of Indian Diaspora writers. Authors have tried to give their best outputs to reach this anthology to its intended goal. Hopefully this book will be helpful to both students and scholars alike.

Set in different cities around the world, Elaine Chiew's award-winning stories travel into the heart of the Singaporean and Malaysian Chinese diasporas to explore the lives of those torn between cultures and juggling divided selves. In the title story, four writers find their cultural bonds of friendship tested when a handsome young Asian writer joins their group. In other stories, a brother searches for his sister forced to serve as a comfort woman during World War Two; three Singaporean sisters run a French gourmet restaurant in New York; a woman raps about being a Tiger Mother in Belgravia; and a filmmaker struggles to document the lives of samsui women—Singapore's thrifty, hardworking construction workers. > Acutely observed, wry and playful, her stories are as worldly and emotionally resonant as the characters themselves. This fabulous debut collection heralds an exciting new literary voice.

African Women Writing Diaspora: Transnational Perspectives in the Twenty-First Century examines contemporary fiction by African women authors to resonate diaspora perspectives on what it means to be African within transnational spaces. Through a critical lens, the collection interrogates the ways in which women construct new ways of telling the African story in the global age of social, economic, and political transformation. African Women Writing Diaspora illustrates that for African women, life in the diaspora is an uncharted journey across new landscapes of identity beyond Africa’s borders as a unifying theme. The fictional works analyzed represent the leading women writers who dominate the African literary canon, and the contributors explore diverse themes of immigrant life, racialized identities, and otherness within transnational spaces of the west.

Shifting Homelands, Travelling Identities: Writers of the Caribbean Diaspora is a multifaceted collection of essays that unfolds the charge of the Caribbean writer to represent a region with a complicated history and an even more complex future. It encompasses the work of Caribbean writers living and writing abroad, rather than at home and thus, evaluates, critiques and reflects on Caribbean identity and reality from the perspectives of exiled authors. Questions of race, nation-building and postcolonial separation/connection, the Caribbean landscape, and navigating the minefield of culture are thoroughly examined. The essays have been chosen by editors Jasbir Jain and Supriya Agarwal from presentations at a seminar on Indo-Caribbean writing held in Jaipur, India. The selections are as rich and varied as the Caribbean itself, presenting and examining the work of authors such as Jean Rhys, the three NAipauls - Shiva, V.S. and Seepersad - Austin Clarke, Jamaica Kincaid, Caryl Phillips, George Lamming, and Arnold Itwaru among others. An excellent read for anyone interested in Caribbean Literature and the study of Caribbean Writers, Shifting Homelands, travelling Identities: Writers of the Caribbean Diaspora is also a tribute to the Caribbean itself.

“Includes some of Lam’s most memorable writings, about cuisine, self-esteem, sex and kung fu, all seen from a two-hemisphere perspective.” —SFGate East Eats West shines new light on the bridges and crossroads where two global regions meld into one worldwide “immigrant nation.” In this new nation, with its amalgamation of divergent ideas, tastes, and styles, today’s bold fusion becomes tomorrow’s classic. But while the space between East and West continues to shrink in this age of globalization, some cultural gaps remain. In this collection of twenty-one personal essays, Andrew Lam, the award-winning author of Perfume Dreams, continues to explore the Vietnamese diaspora, this time concentrating not only on how the East and West have changed but how they are changing each other. Lively and engaging, East Eats West searches for meaning in nebulous territory charted by very few. Part memoir, part meditation, and part cultural anthropology, East Eats West is about thriving in the West with one foot still in the East. “In these lovely, wise, probing essays, Andrew Lam not only illuminates the crucial twenty-first-century issues of immigration and cultural identity but the greater, enduring issues of what it means to be human . . . a compelling book.” —Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize–winning author “Andrew Lam is an expert time-traveler, collapsing childhood and adulthood; years of war and peace; and the evolution of language in his own life, time, and mind. To read Andrew’s work is a joy and a profound journey.” —Farai Chideya, author of The Episodic Career “One of the best American essayists of his generation.” —Wayne Karlin, author of A Wolf by the Ears

The theoretical innovations of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, James Clifford and others have in recent years vitalized postcolonial and diaspora studies, challenging ways in which we understand ‘culture’ and developing new ways of thinking beyond the confines of the nation state. The articles in this volume look at recent developments in diasporic literature and theory, alluding to the work of seminal diaspora theoreticians, but also interrogating such thinkers in the light of recent cultural production (including literature, film and visual art) as well as recent world events. The articles are organized in pairs, offering alternative perspectives on crucial aspects of diaspora theory today: Celebration or Melancholy?; Gender Biases and the Canon of Diasporic Literature; Diasporas of Violence and Terror; Time, Place and Diasporic “Home”; and Border Crossings. A number of the articles are illustrated by discussions of particular authors, such as Caryl Phillips, Salman Rushdie, and Michael Ondaatje, and the range of reference found in this volume covers writing from many parts of the world including contemporary Chicana visual art, Asian diaspora writers, and Black British, Afro-Caribbean, Native North American, and African writing.