South-Asian Literature and Diaspora: Examining Manjushree Thapa’s “Tilled Earth”

Abstract

The phenomena and condition of being in a diaspora has been analysed from various perspectives by the scholars of diaspora-studies. Although the term “Diaspora” originally referred to the condition of the Jews who were dispersed from their ‘promised land’, the word has acquired new meanings over the years and it is now applied to any community or group that has been displaced from their native or ‘original homeland’ to two or more countries. The key issues that are often considered to be integral to our understanding of diaspora are the concepts or discourses of ‘nation’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘homeland’, ‘identity’, ‘culture’, ‘assimilation’ with the host-country, ‘exile’, ‘alienation’, ‘otherization’ and discrimination. This paper would attempt to study Manjushree Thapa’s short story titled “Tilled Earth” in relation to these issues pertaining to diasporic communities or individuals.