Construction and Reconstruction of Space and Identity

Abstract

This chapter explores the United Kingdom-born author of Indian origin Jasvinder Sanghera's autobiographical work Shame Travels (2011) to study the construction and reconstruction of gender, place, and identity through textual representations. To achieve this goal, the study benefits from the critical perspectives of the feminist geographers Doreen Massey and Gillian Rose as well as the feminist theorist Judith Butler. The analysis is concerned with the juxtaposition of identities that are formed in two different places, that is the Indian immigrant community in Great Britain along with the narrator's native village Kang Sabhu, in rural Punjab, India. It is argued that the perceived spaces in the text are constructed out of social relations and are not necessarily independent entities.