Representation of Diasporic Identity in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Oleander Girl

Abstract

This paper examines the representation of diasporic identity in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Oleander Girl from the perspective of contemporary critical approaches to diaspora. It is argued that moving beyond its preoccupation with the poetics and politics of colonialism, postcolonial literature is making forays into diasporic dynamism to the extent that contemporary fiction within its ambit can be seen as literature of diaspora to a great extent. Divakaruni’s Oleander Girl focuses on the issues pertaining to identity formation and identity crisis. National, religious, racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds that work as the determiners of one’s identity have been problematized in the novel. In the process, the idea of plurality embedded in one’s identity instead of the illusion of any singular identity has been suggested. The concern with identity politics is dominant in these literary texts against the backdrop of cross-cultural, inter-racial, multi-ethnic and transnational communication and interaction.