The Crisis of Deracinated Writers

Abstract

The complex experiences and the identity crisis of the deracinated writers can be clearly discerned in their writings. This essay highlights the themes reflected in their works, such as geographical and cultural dislocation, identity crisis, diaspora, migrancy, sense of alienation, multiculturalism, communal, racial and gender discrimination, assimilation and imaginative homeland. Some of these writers regret the loss of their homeland while others do not ponder nostalgically upon this irretrievable loss but cherish the new myriad identities and knowledges. However, the postcolonial diasporic women authors like Bharati Mukherjee, Chitra Banerjee, Jhumpa Lahiri, Anita Desai, Kiran Desai, Meena Alexander and others have more explicitly narrated the plight and misery of their female and male protagonists in foreign lands.