Marietta KOSMA
Abstract
Shailja Patel’s Migritude focuses on the placement and re-placement of black South East Asian women and diasporic communities in the discourse of international concern through the trope of memory. This article demonstrates how Patel’s protest narrative brings to the forefront histories of the subaltern that are otherwise silenced through decolonization. The female body’s queer identification falls into a transgressive dialogue in which identity norms are challenged, as the strictures of traditional normativity are broken by the constant movement of the East African Asian female subject that operates within and outside the framework of the traditional home. The unique experiences of belonging of these female subjects place them into a new multi-dimensional locus, where a different consciousness of identity arises. Attentive to the multiplicity of voices, Patel engages with transnational political discourse as she achieves to project a new form of solidarity among the dispossessed, while contesting imperial remains.
Keywords:
East African Asian, Literature, migration studies, new materialism, transnational feminism