Abstract
Home is a very important notion in human life which helps people establish emotional, social and intellectual belonging and identifications so that they can hold on to life. When the sense of home is contested, the sense of identity is impaired too. Those people who are characterized by the sense of disconnectedness and desire to re-establish their home are known as diasporic people. The protagonist of Maru (1971), Margaret is one of those diasporic people who long for home and attachments to people. This article is an attempt to examine the struggle of Margaret against a ruthless and cruel society. In her status as a diasporic individual, Margaret is seen as a nonhuman being due to her race, as a Masarwa, living in Botswana. She is alienated, and treated as a pariah, because she does not belong to a superior race defined by the colonial British forces which ruled Botswana. The article tries to view the protagonist’s estrangement and her experience as a diasporic pariah through the lenses of some of the famous postcolonial critics and writers. It also tries to explore the origins and aspects of this kind of treatment.
Highlights
Diaspora does not always refer to physical places
In A Woman Alone Bessie Head enunciates her diasporic identity saying that “nothing can take away the fact that I have never had a country; not in South Africa or in Botswana where I live as a stateless person" (MacKenzie, 1990, p.28)
In The Life and Works of Bessie Head, Virginia Uzoma Ola comments on the fact that Bessie Head chooses her characters from the ones who are “refugees, exiles, victims” of marginalization (Ola 1994, p.24)
Summary
Diaspora does not always refer to physical places. It is basically living in a place where you do not feel you do belong intellectually, emotionally, and physically. Margaret becomes a teacher to prove that a Masarwa person is equal to a so-called Botswanan in every way Ola compares what such diaspora characters go through saying that “a personal and very private odyssey of the soul from which they emerge regenerated, as well as spiritually and psychologically enriched” (Ola, 1994, p.24). Diasporic individual is seen as any person who feels alienated, or who has lost the sense of belonging. This individual loses the “common bonds” with their environment, and they are rendered ad alien or pariah in the new community. Bessie Head’s Maru clearly examines the struggle of the protagonist, Margaret, to belong Her hybridity and the fact that she lives in diaspora deepen her sense of loss and alienation. We will try in our present study to explore the reasons behind Margaret’s alienation and discrimination
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