NAVIGATING THE SELF: DIASPORIC CARTOGRAPHIES IN THE FICTION OF BHARATI MUKHERJEE AND MEENA ALEXANDER

Abstract

The beginning of the twenty-first century was marked with unprecedented migrations in the world that has changed the concept of home, belonging, and identity. Bharati Mukherjee and Meena Alexander are two of the key characters who argue on the multidimensionality of the diasporic consciousness in this shifting environment. South Asian origin and sense of acute exile, although both of them share them, take different directions in literary paths. Mukherjee fiction is a radicalized acceptance of assimilation and self-inventing and fetishizes the innovation of a new American identity through breaking and remaking. In his turn, Alexander texts are done in the manner of the lyrical speculations on fragmentation, memory and emotion bargaining of existence between worlds. In this paper, the author draws parallels between the manner in which both authors trace two distinct different diasporic cartographies Mukherjee by producing narratives of radical cultural transformation, and Alexander a poetics of multiple belonging and without-homelandness. The two halves of the immigrant experience they share are the exaltation of renewal and the agony of being in a transitional state that casts light on the issue of identity under the most mobile world.