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Title DECOLONIZING RACE AND GENDER?: A STUDY OF SELECTED SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORIC POETRY

Author(s) ROSHAN AMBER ALI

Abstract This research aims to explore the different themes through which South Asian writers in diaspora attempt decolonize race and gender in selected poetry. Literary practices of South Asian women play a significant role in their contribution to feminist discourse and their written experiences reflect on how feminism is practiced and perceived by brown women in diaspora. Such form feminism and feminist practices emerge from an intersectional approach to gender and race. The poetry selected for analysis is taken from the works of Rupi Kaur, Fatimah Asghar and Leah-Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha who are second generation immigrant women from South Asia. The researcher uses theoretical frameworks provided by Chandra Mohanty‘s Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity and Sara Suleri‘s Women Skin Deep: Feminism and the Postcolonial Condition to analyze the themes in selected poetry. The researcher uses the framework to determine the role of race in postcolonialism as well as South Asian feminisms. This study considers the main factors that contribute to presentation of racial and feminist experiences in South Asian diaspora in North America. Aspects of racism, classism, misogyny and oppression are common issues addressed in the themes. These themes are also scrutinized through the repetition of binaries, uneasiness of immigrants in identity formations and generalizations made through autobiographical depiction of their experiences in their poetry. This research also explores various elements of South Asian feminism that can be found in contemporary literature and theory but were marginalized in Western colonial and phallocentric historical discourse. Keywords: Postcolonialism, Race, Gender, Feminism, Decolonization.

Type Thesis/Dissertation MS

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Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2022-01-21

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