From Fragmentation to Integration in Select Works of Uma Parameswaran

Abstract

The enhanced process of globalization has brought many changes all over the world. People started moving to Western countries for a better life, economy, education and it has provided opportunities for them to grow inspite of having controversial issues in the alien land. They face alienation, up rootedness, loneliness with the resultant development of discrimination, newlineintergenerational conflicts and cultural dilemmas. Diasporic writers brings out the obstacles,counterforces, distractions and setbacks faced by the immigrants and they believe that change will happen one day or the other. The dispossessed person s search for identity has become a perennial newlinesustaining force for the immigrant writers. Uma Parameswaran herself an immigrant who has newlineexperienced the feelings of dislocation, migration, alienation and rootlessness expresses such things through her writings. Her writings comprised of different genres which include short stories, plays and newlinepoems with common themes which ascertain her Western experience with the Indian realities newline newlineMajor objectives : newline(i) To analyse the state of the global Indian diaspora and to explore and evaluate its newlineresponse to the land of its origin. newline(ii) To focus on the search for identity in the lives of Indo Canadians. newline(iii) To analyse the conflict of the protagonists in the society due to alienation. newline(iv) To discuss the concept of assimilation and multiculturalism. newline newlineHypothesis: newlineTo analyse the diasporic consciousness of the immigrants, their fragmented identity, feeling of nostalgia and struggle between regression, progression, dislocation and newlinethe process of assimilation. newline newlineii) Methodology : Identity, diaspora and globalization form part of the postcolonial writing which focuses on the important aspects like journeying, loss, the search for community,the arrival of the stranger, the global conditions and eventually the role of the intellectuals in the third world. To analyse the diasporic condition, Post colonial concepts like Ambivalence, Hybridity and Mimicry have been followed.