Intersectionality Reading of Marginalization and Class Degradation in Indian Diaspora Women Narrative: Bharti Mukherjee’s Jasmine and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices
Subject Areas : Journal of Language, Culture, and Translation
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Keywords: Class-Conscious Exclusion, Intersectionality, Structural Intersectionality, Situated Intersectionality, Translocational Intersecting Marginality,
Abstract :
The purpose of this article is to focus on the issue of intersectional marginalization and class-conscious exclusion of South Asians in the United States as portrayed in two novels written by writers of Indian origin: Bharti Mukherjee’s Jasmine and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices. The study investigates how intersectional mantra is the reason for the marginalization and exclusion of South Asian immigrants in the United States. To describe the intersectional class-conscious exclusion and marginality of Indian and Indo-Americans, the study conjoins Crenshaw's structural intersectionality and Yuval-Davis' situated intersectionality to formulate a new concept, translocational intersecting marginality. As an analytical tool, the novel intersectionality form enables an analysis which explores how Indian marginality and exclusion are constructed within specific historical and socio-political realities and how myriad reasons such as colonization and their repercussions; the stereotypical Indo-American representations of Indians; Muslims and finally inter-ethnic encounters which dominated American discourses incorporate all intersectional aspects would result in marginality and intersectional exclusion of in-transit characters in the West. The study has reached the conclusion that the central characters of both narratives are exposed to new in-transit-intersectional-identities and displaced fragmentation, transformation, and fluidity. In comparing the two complementary narratives, it emerges that both Indo-American diasporic identities are constructed through overlapping systems of oppression, which construct social inequality and exclusion. Moreover, displaced, fragmented intersectional identities are forced to resort to mimicry of Western traits, which reduces their presence in America to partial outsiders within.
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