Transnational Identity in Unaccustomed Earth: A Study of Jhumpa Lahiri’s and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Short Fictions

Abstract

This paper intends to examine transnational identity of first- and second-generation Indian diasporic and/or transnational subjects through the portrayal of protagonists in Jhumpa Lahiri’s and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s short fictions: “Unaccustomed Earth” and “Hell-heaven” (2008), “Clothes” and “Silver Pavements and Golden Roofs (1995)”. Theories of transnationalism, identity and transnational identity were used to scrutinise the ways those fictional characters define themselves as well as the ways they negotiate homeland and the ‘unaccustomed earth’. This paper also discovers opportunities, and difficulties faced by first- and second-generation Indian immigrants, and the differences between the impacts of crossing national boundaries towards both communities. This study used textual analysis of selected narratives for an understanding of transnational identity in literature, and how Indian diasporic or transnational subjects made sense of their roots and routes when those fictional characters were trapped in between their Indian roots, and the need to make sense of unaccustomed earth.