Papers by shashikala assella
This thesis critically explores the “difference” of contemporary South Asian American women’s fic... more This thesis critically explores the “difference” of contemporary South Asian American women’s fiction and their fictional narratives of women’s lives, away from the ethnic postcolonial depictions of diasporic women. The selected novels of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Amulya Malladi, Bharti Kirchner, V.V. Ganeshananthan, Nayomi Munaweera, Nausheen Pasha-Zaidi and Shaila Abdullah studied here interrogate the depiction of South Asian women characters both within diasporic American locations and in South Asian settings. These writers establish individual identities that defy homogeneity assigned to regional identities and establish heterogeneous characters that are influenced through transnational travel. This dissertation’s engagement with exotic identities, foodways, ethno-social identities and diasporic and native socio-cultural pressures for women, offers a “different” reading of contemporary South Asian women’s fiction. The identities that are being reinvented by the selected Indian...
Alien Domiciles: Diasporic Inquiries into South Asian Women’s Narratives, 2020
Sri Lankan diasporic author Shankari Chandran’s narrative gives a voice to the Othered group of S... more Sri Lankan diasporic author Shankari Chandran’s narrative gives a voice to the Othered group of Sri Lankan Tamils to explore their ethno cultural identity through her debut novel Song of the Sun God (2017). Being the Other, not only in their own country but also having had to occupy the alien space of the Other in the diaspora, the female narrators find their own means of subverting, transgressing and adopting their alien spaces to suit their own needs. This paper examines Chandran’s use of culinary references as a mode of domesticating the alienness ascribed to diasporic women and how various paradigms of female agency is rediscovered through food practices and rituals explored in the novel. The agency, adaptability and uniqueness of the female narrators will be analysed with reference to theoretical underpinnings of diasporic narratives explored in Mannur, Huggan and other critics.
Women Writers of the South Asian Diaspora: Interpreting Gender, Texts and Contexts, 2020
Nayomi Munaweera’s debut novel Island of a Thousand Mirrors (2012) examines Sri Lanka’s ethnic wa... more Nayomi Munaweera’s debut novel Island of a Thousand Mirrors (2012) examines Sri Lanka’s ethnic war that ravaged the country for three decades from the perspective of a diasporic Sinhalese woman and a young Tamil girl-turned-militant. The novel that navigates diasporic concerns of lands-left-behind and multiple socio-ethnic hierarchies within Sri Lanka’s two main ethnic groups, presents an old tale of ethnic harmony with a new perspective: women’s perspective. This paper argues that spatial (dis)locations create distinct identities for the female protagonists. The novel is also analysed as a diasporic fiction that steers through subtle power hierarchies of class, gender, socio-economic standing and ethno-religious affiliations through its narrative. I analyse Munaweera as a distinct Sri Lankan American woman writer whose uniqueness is brought to the fore through her use of ethnic, social and other culture specific terms, which establish her presence away from other contemporary South Asian American women writers. I also examine the importance of the women centred narrative in the text that highlight the significance of women’s voices, in contemporary Sri Lankan diasporic women’s writing, through this paper.
This paper endeavours to read V.V.Ganeshananthan’ s Love Marriage from a diasporic perspective fo... more This paper endeavours to read V.V.Ganeshananthan’ s Love Marriage from a diasporic perspective focusing on women characters in the narrative. As Uma Narayan argues and Lisa Lau confirms the position of the novelist as an informer of the ‘Other’s’ culture to educate the uninitiated through the use of ethnocentric details evident in the South Asian American women’s fiction will be read in Ganeshanathan’s use of detailed descriptions on the Tamil diaspora in America and Canada. The exoticised textual details in the narrative and the position of the women make them the authentic insiders to the ‘Other’. It will be contended that Ganeshananthan ventures into the American diasporic women writers’ tradition rather than the postcolonial tradition by marketing the marginality of the ethnic identities of her women characters through such cultural and social details. By emulating the established writers such as Mukherjee and Divakaruni, Love Marriage provides an insider’s view to a diasporic audience. This paper will argue that the ethnicised gaze of Ganeshananthan enables her to seek her audience and accolades from among the diasporic audiences and not from the domestic audience in Sri Lanka therefore writing to the diaspora from the diaspora.
Exploring Gender in the Literature of the Indian Diaspora. , 2015
The Mango Season (2003). Malladi defines the new South Indian individuality through abundant use ... more The Mango Season (2003). Malladi defines the new South Indian individuality through abundant use of food imagery and culinary nostalgia. This essay examines the relevance of food and alimentary images in Malladi's novel and their significance in the development of the characters and interpersonal relationships among and between the characters. The (re)imagining of South Indianness as opposed to the already established "Indianness" will be analysed through Malladi's references to South Indian food patterns and specific references to South Indian traditions and habits, especially through the eyes of a South Indian American woman. This essay argues that food habits and food imagery act as identity markers for the women characters, thereby shaping their distinctiveness with special nuances that highlight their ethno-regional affiliations. Further this essay also strengthens the fact that food and references to food also create social, racial and sexual identities. The specific use of food to establish female individuality and food as a metaphor for emotional development and expression of characters will be analysed through this essay, making connections with the overt references to food in conjunction to women in Malladi's The Mango Season.
Critical and Creative Wings, 2016
Journal of the Faculty of Humanities,Vol.XII 2010 University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2010
Sri Lankan authors who write in English have been part of Sri Lanka's international literary corp... more Sri Lankan authors who write in English have been part of Sri Lanka's international literary corpus since before the Independence of the country in 1948. The initial writers just after the independence in 1948 used their fluency in the language of the coloniser to challenge and sometimes to appease the colonial powers in various political and personal agendas. Most of these writings were either political or religious, and tried to get the post independence Sri Lankan elite to understand the country they had gained back from the long colonial rule. But since Michael Ondaatje's international fame in 1992 with his Man Booker Prize for The English Patient (1992), Sri Lankan diasporic authors began to gain recognition both in the island and abroad. Their recognition brought more Sri Lankan diasporic authors into the limelight such as Shyam Selvadurai (Funny Boy) and Romesh Gunesekera (Reef) and Sri Lankan writing in English began get noticed and accepted within different diasporic writing groups. Sri Lankan American women writers (of whom there are only a few) who are a part of the expanding body of Sri Lankan diasporic writers, emerged in the early 2000s into the already established Sri Lankan diasporic writers' group. Although they have neither been widely recognised nor been acknowledged for their contribution to the expanding literary corpus, Sri Lankan American women authors address issues and socio political changes from a women's perspective which needs to be taken note of. Although there are various reasons for their lack of popularity, these women writers base their plots and their narratives on Sri Lankan experiences and depict a distinct Sri Lankan character through their novels. Further these Sri Lankan American authors portray Sri Lankanness in their characters and in their plots by exploring rural towns and landscapes in the island. Through this paper I will try to analyse the use of urban and rural landscapes in two recent novels by Ru Freeman (A Disobedient Girl (2009)) and Karen Roberts Shashi Assella YSASM (The Lament of the Dhobi Woman ) and will analyse the use of frozen innocence that is being depicted through the characters located within rural landscapes vis a vis the fluid and corrupt urban characters that inhabit urban cities and towns. I will also analyse the influence of urban characters and urban spaces on the innocent, rural characters that usher extreme changes in to the naive and uncorrupted lives of the rural characters.
Are we exotic, rebellious or simply stereotyped? South Asian women in American cinema.
Conference Presentations by shashikala assella
Translocal and transnational spaces have (re) shaped diasporic immigrant identity over the years.... more Translocal and transnational spaces have (re) shaped diasporic immigrant identity over the years. The ability to not only adapt and adopt spaces, but to retain and re-live left behind spaces makes modern diasporic, immigrant identity unique in its negotiation of ethnic, national and postcolonial landscapes. Drawing on Anthony Appiah’s “Cosmopolitan Patriotism” this paper argues for a re- reading of Shyam Selvadurai’s The Hungry Ghosts (2014) as a fiction that negotiates translocal and transnational spaces, inhabited by modern postcolonial diasporic subjects. The (re) imagination of ethno- national identities that creates a cosmopolitan rootlessness in response to personal or socio-cultural crisis, will be explored through a close reading of Shivan’s rite of passage into ethno-national, and sexual maturity in the novel. This paper will draw examples from other diasporic novels, by both Sri Lankan and Indian authors, to investigate how private and/ or public crisis creates cosmopolitan patriots out of postcolonial subjects who were framed within a national discourse, to straddle translocal spaces of ethnic and socio-cultural significance.
Key Words: Translocal, Transnational, Immigrant identity, Crisis, Sri Lankan, Diaspora
Drafts by shashikala assella
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Papers by shashikala assella
Conference Presentations by shashikala assella
Key Words: Translocal, Transnational, Immigrant identity, Crisis, Sri Lankan, Diaspora
Drafts by shashikala assella
Key Words: Translocal, Transnational, Immigrant identity, Crisis, Sri Lankan, Diaspora