Diasporic Consciousness in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s “Arranged Marriage”

Abstract

Diasporic writing in novels, short stories, travelogues, poems, and essays is not new to post-colonial literature. The sense of yearning for the ‘homeland’ or ‘root’, a strange and unusual attachment to its traditions, religions, and languages, gave birth to the so-called diasporic literature. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, one of the foremost writers of diasporic literature, in her American Book Award-winning first collection of short stories, Arranged Marriage, beautifully presents, among other things, the matrix of diasporic consciousness like alienation, loneliness, rootlessness, nostalgia, questioning, cultural conflict, etc. The paper delves into these elements and highlights Divakaruni’s concerns about racism, economic disparity, miscarriage, divorce, etc., in her acclaimed collection of short stories, Arranged Marriage.