This dissertation studies fictionalized diasporic subalternity, how it is represented by the authors (of the same social status or a cosmopolitan writer), and how different types of agency layered onto the characters influence each other. The choice of texts includes Amitav Ghosh’s River of Smoke (2011), Kiran Desai’s Inheritance of Loss (2006) and four Gujarati short stories – “Jāt, “Safe Distance”, “Bāp nū Bārmū” and “Swapna Samudra” – from the anthology Vanboti Vartao (2001). The dissertation addresses the importance of assigning agency to subaltern characters, treating them as subjects of their own history instead of mere victims. Some of these techniques designed to ascribe agency include Ghosh’s use of hybrid languages like pidgin and creole, use of dialect, flashback and interior monologues by Gujarati Dalit writers, as well as the depiction of itinerant migration and personal choice in Kiran Desai’s novel

Last modified

• 04/30/2018

Creator

• Tanushree Vachharajani

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/N21Q36

Subject

• English

Keyword

• diaspora
• Gujarati
• subaltern
• Dalit
• pidgin

Date created

• 2017-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright