Abstract
This chapter examines the construction of imagined homelands in a post-national world with a particular focus on the transnational, South Asian, brown women who are expected to display their dis/interested love and sacrifice. Drawing upon Gloria Anzaldúa's theory of Nueva Conciencia Mestiza and the notion of borderland, this chapter studies Taslima Nasreen's French Lover (2002) and Monica Ali's Brick Lane (2004) to address the following questions: How do the female protagonists of the novels—that is, Nilanjana and Nazneen, respectively—succeed to negotiate their position as in-betweeners between imagined homelands? How different are the male and the female characters' perceptions of their home/land? How do the women imagine their homeland when they are asked whether they want to go back or what is their homeland like? Both novels propose a new discourse of home/land in response to such (rhetorical) inquiries. It is argued that the two case studies demarcate the idea of border(home)land as a notion that is neither geographically nor imaginarily fixed.
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