A Geocritical Reading of Diasporic Identity in the Prose of Leila Aboulela, Jhumpa Lahiri and Monica Ali

Abstract

This paper proposes a geocritical reading of diasporic identity in the prose of Leila Aboulela, Jhumpa Lahiri and Monica Ali. It starts by looking at the experience of women joining their husbands in the West, their integration (or lack thereof) and the characters’ strategies for maintaining their faith, humor and specific cognitive mechanisms in spite of the culture shock they are facing. My hypothesis is that, instead of conforming to consecrated patterns of cultural interaction – such as assimilation into Western modernity, isolationist rebellion against it or voluntary uprootal – these characters manage to find another way of defining themselves against a new background: namely, they create mental spaces to inhabit, bringing their original homes and their adoptive ones into constant dialogue and subjecting both worlds to a combination of irony and empathy.

Keywords

• diasporic identity
• geocriticism
• open/closed spaces
• postmigration
• humor
• community