Jagdish Joshi, Mahesh Bhatt
Literature is one of the
best mediums which can unfold various issues of the subalterns especially the
issues of women. Pen is mightier than sword. In the era of globalization,
migration has become inevitable for progress and sustenance. The issues of
immigrant women-vis- a-vis those who are at home are of prime concern today and
the expatriate women writers give voice to it.
The paper will focus on
comparative study of two novels of the expatriate novelists, viz. Anita Rau
Badami’s The Hero’s Walk and Bapsi Sidhwa’s An American Brat. It will
concentrate on various issues that women face in the host country and homeland.
In The Hero’s Walk, Maya goes to Canada and then marries with Alan. Her
condition in a patriarchal set up and the freedom that she gets in Canada are
narrated by Badami. An American Brat narrates the journey of a young woman Feroza
through three cultures-her own community’s Parsi culture, her country’s
Pakistani Islamic culture and the western culture of the United States. In
Pakistan she finds clash between conservative Islamic traditions and freedom of
her community. A comparison between gender-relations in India and among
overseas Indian communities will be carried out.
The novels will be
studied from the theories of Edward Said and Gaytri Spivak on legacy of
Colonialism. It will
help to reassess the conventional ways of understanding the status of women and
will suggest various steps that are required to be taken in social, political
and economic policies for eradication of this gender discrimination and to
provide a dignified status to women.
Subaltern, Diaspora, Colonialism, Gender
VOL.13, ISSUE No.3, September 2021