Migration Literature and Hybridity: A study of Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth

Our age is characterized by mobility, migration and border crossing: refugees, exiles, expatriates, immigrants, and nomads of all kinds are straddling national, cultural and linguistic borders. This mass migration has been vividly reflected in the contemporary literature in which the whole world appears to be on the go. I have chosen a 2008 collection of short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri whose works deal mainly with the cultural predicament of the Indian immigrants in the West. Each story of this collection begins with a young couple who migrates to the West in the hope of a better life. This essay will focus on the process of identity negotiation of these characters. It intends to argue that Lahiri's first-generation-immigrant characters do not constitute a homogeneous group as each tries to negotiate his/her cultural identity differently. Gloria Anzaldua's borderland and Homi K. Bhabha's hybridity are particularly relevant to this study given the way they offer the space from which Lahiri's characters can negotiate between the various claims that their gender, culture, and national affiliation make on their identities. This study makes an attempt to discuss these characters' identities in three categories: ghettoization, hyphenation, and acculturation.

Migration Literature and Hybridity: A study of Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth Keywords:

Hybridity , Identity , Ghettoization , Hyphenation , Acculturation