Diaspora Literature: Definition Of Diaspora

“Diaspora” (from the Greek word for “scattering”) refers to the dispersion of a people from their homeland. Diaspora is a displacement of a community or an individual from one geographical region to another geographical region. A simple definition of diaspora literature, then, would be works that are written by authors who live outside their native land. The term identifies a work’s distinctive geographic origins. But diaspora literature may also be defined by its contents, regardless of where it was written. Diaspora Literature involves an idea of a homeland, a place from where the displacement occurs and narratives of harsh journeys undertaken on account of economic compulsions. Basically Diaspora is a minority community living in exile.

Among them, no doubt, would figure the large-scale migration in the 60’s and 70’s if elite and middle class populations of the ex-colonies of Asia, Africa and Latin America to western metropolises. From these migrants and from the newly educated middle classes of the independence nation states of Asia, Africa and Latin America, there began to emerge a body of writing that engaged in many complex ways with the realities of the post war global order. In its early phases, such writing, whether in French or Spanish or English, figured only marginally as mere appendages to the master literary traditions of the French, Spanish and English respectively. In the context of English Literature one thinks, for instance, of the creation of the category ‘Commonwealth’ in Leeds in the 60’s by Prof. Norman Jeffares. It was category that did two things at the same time. It provides a space within which one could begin to situate creative writing in English that emerged from the ex-colonies of Great Britain. The creation of the category was recognition of the fact that such a body of writing was beginning to become substantial and could no longer be ignored. And yet, the very term ‘Commonwealth’ connoted a relationship of dependence and secondariness with respect to the main literary tradition of

When on reads this, one is tempted to imagine that this would be the story of the diasporic Indian torn between two time and cultures, attempting to find his roots and a sense of belonging. Writers of the diaspora bring along with their characters their personal sense of root-lessness, their attempts at ‘straddling two cultures’, their efforts to belong, of acculturation, their need to merge and not to stand out, their homesickness for the life and place they left behind and yet a disinclination to go back, etc. In this novel, Chaudhuri does not bring in any of these in his portrayal of his diasporic Jayojit. On a vacation from the US, with a recent divorce lurking in the background, his visit to India seems to be more out of sense of affection. From the moment he takes a taxi from the airport, Jayojit (the protagonist) seems to be living an ordinary, unexciting life filled with the mundane, the commonplace experiences of the urban Indian today. One recollects with a sense of homesickness the novels of R.K. Narayan, which had nothing spectacular happening but yet could hold the attention of the readers. The ordinary, everyday events of any urban household where the aged parents live on their own go on and on all through the novel. From not bargain with the taxi driver, because of his security and pride in earning in dollars, Jayojit fells and proves again and again the fact of being an