Reworlding: The Literature of the Indian Diaspora

(Hardback)

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Adopting the concept of "diaspora" - literally "dispersal", or the scattering of a people - to the historical and contemporary presence of people of Indian subcontinental origin in other areas of the world, Emmanuel Nelson uses this paradigm to analyze Indian expatriate writing. In "Reworlding", Nelson has commissioned 14 critical essays by as many scholars to examine major areas of the diaspora - among them Britain, the United States, Canada, Trinidad, Fiji, Singapore, East and South Africa - and prominent literary figures, including Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipail, Kamala Markandaya, Bharati Mukherjee, and Raja Rao. Collectively, the essays demonstrate that the various literary traditions within the Indian diaspora share certain common resonances engendered by historical connections, spiritual affinities, and racial memories. Individually, they provide challenging insights into the particular experiences and writers. At the core of the diasporic writing is the haunting presence of India and the shared anguish of personal loss that generate the aesthetics of "reworlding" underlying and unifying this body of literature. This collection should be of value to scholars and students of Indian writing in English, postcolonial writing in general, and the literature of exile and immigration.

Reviews

Greenwood Press and Nelson are to be congratulated for suggesting new ways of historicizing South Asian diaspora literatures and for providing a bibliographic tool for further research. All the essays in the volume are scholarly and lucid; several are enlightening and provocative, drawing attention to vital narratives of survival and resistance among a brutally unhoused and colonized people.-World Literature Today
Reworlding is a valuable work, one that is likely to remain an essential critical text for those interested in the literature of the Indian diaspora.-The Toronto South Asian Review
"Reworlding is a valuable work, one that is likely to remain an essential critical text for those interested in the literature of the Indian diaspora."-The Toronto South Asian Review
"Greenwood Press and Nelson are to be congratulated for suggesting new ways of historicizing South Asian diaspora literatures and for providing a bibliographic tool for further research. All the essays in the volume are scholarly and lucid; several are enlightening and provocative, drawing attention to vital narratives of survival and resistance among a brutally unhoused and colonized people."-World Literature Today

Author Bio

EMMANUEL S. NELSON is Associate Professor of English at the State University of New York, at Cortland. His special interests in Third World, postcolonial, and African-American and other ethnic American literatures are reflected in numerous articles published in such journals as Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS), Journal of American Culture, World Literature Today, Australian Studies, and Antipodes, as well as reference books and essay collections. Nelson is editor of Connections: Essays on Black Literature and AIDS: The Literary Response, and he is developing a bio-critical sourcebook on Indian diaspora writers for Greenwood Press.