Reclaiming Identity and Self-Definition in the Multicultural Society of the United States: A Study of Isabel Allende’s The Sum of Our Days

Abstract

Isabel Allende’s  The sum of our days is a memoir, narrating the story of her family and her extended family, their experiences as immigrants and citizens of  the present day multicultural society of the United States. Allende highlights the hardships of living in the complexities of transculturation and develops a hybrid identity. The present paper aims to explore by a variety of cultural and sociological theories, various features of multicultural society, stressing on the cultural and linguistic predicaments faced by Allende and her ethnically, culturally and religiously divergent extended family and the self- identity created by Allende by adopting an interdependent notion of self.