Indian Writers

Indian Writers attempt to locate diasporic voices in the interstitial spaces of countless ideologies. The anthology provides a critical examination of dislocated diasporic subjects – those who have adjusted to the dislocation well, those who have chosen the hybrid spaces for empowerment, those who are dragged forcefully to various territories, and yet those who gleefully inhabit trans-local spaces. A wide range of voices raise these critical questions: How do we read these voices? How are the voices received in various locations? Are these voices considered Indian? Do they represent Indianness, or some hybridized version of it? What is an authentic cultural identity? What, ultimately, is Indianness, or for that matter, any hard-won national or ethnic identity? Additionally, as more female writers are being read, both in the global south and in the north, the reception of these texts, particularly in an era of globalization, and in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack in the United States, raises questions on how the «other», the subaltern, is represented and read. Some writers use an assimilationist approach to the cultures of the West to such a degree that they find Indian culture monolithically oppressive, while others continue to romanticize Indianness, yet others eroticize and ethnicize the east for western consumption. The authors of the essays in this anthology examine contemporary debates in postcolonial and transnational literary criticism in an attempt to understand the often complex and hybrid narratives of the diasporic Indian subject.

The Editors: Jaspal K. Singh is an Associate Professor of English at Northern Michigan University. A scholar of postcolonial African and South Asian literature and theory, her area of current research includes transnational South Asian and African literature. Singh’s previously published works include Representation and Resistance: South Asian and African Women’s Texts at Home and in the Diaspora (2008). Rajendra Chetty is Head of Research in the Faculty of Education at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in Cape Town, South Africa. He is active in language education research and has published widely on commonwealth writings, language policy issues, literature teaching, and postcoloniality. His previous works include South African Indian Writings in English (2002), considered a seminal text in the sub-genre, and Indias Abroad: The Diaspora Writes Back (2005), a collaboration with Pier Paolo Piciucco.

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