Inflection in Diasporic Formation through Gender and Sexuality in Amy Tan's The Kitchen God's Wife and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland

Abstract

Amy Tan's The Kitchen God's Wife and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland share a common platform of critical analysis. Winnie, Helen, and Pearl in The Kitchen God's Wife, and Subash, Gauri, Bela, and Meghna in The Lowland are the representative figures of the Asian American dispora. Their plight is the plight of inflection in diasporic formation through gender and sexuality. Therefore, the conventionalized nation of diaspora has been redrawn from the perspective of inflection through gender and sexuality. The way Winnie, Helen, and Pearl gain their inflected diasporic identity has an analoguous resonance with the way Subash, Gauri, Bela, and Meghna are bound to manufacture the similar identity of an inflected diaspora through gender and sexuality. Thus, this dissertation has aimed at bringing the issue of inflection in diasporic formation through gender and sexuality - particularly with the critical analysis of Amy Tan's The Kitchen God's Wife and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland - to the forefront of academic, theoretical, and literary discussion.