Abstract

This paper presents an autoethnographic analysis of hybridity and identity negotiation related to young Tamil Canadian women. Tamil women face unique challenges when it comes to maintaining cultural practices that are so heavily embedded in our upbringing. I have experienced this within my own life, in addition to observing similar challenges among women whom I have encountered within the Sri Lankan Tamil community in the City of Toronto. Young Tamil Canadian women are finding it difficult to conform to cultural expectations given their upbringing in a Western country like Canada Using an autoethnographic approach, the purpose of this paper is to examine transnational issues young Tamil Canadian women – specifically daughters, experience in their diaspora, as a result of negotiating between cultural practices and related impacts or consequences. Specifically, I employ vignette writing, a form of creative analytic practice to explore how young Tamil women are seen as carriers of culture and related implications for their agency and autonomy. Further, I examine and communicate how personal negotiations related to choosing to follow certain Tamil cultural practices and rejecting others, can result in community isolation, rejection from diasporic relations, and uncertainties about self-worth. I consider processes of identity construction and negotiation, and how this results in the creation of a third space that celebrates difference through new ways of being, encompassing cultural values from both the Canadian and Sri Lankan Tamil spectrum. My lived experiences will translate into short narratives that create a tangible example of this phenomenon and is captured by theories of hybridity, third space, acculturation and the good daughter. Key words: Diaspora, hybridity, identity, negotiation, culture, practices, gender, roles, migration, daughters

Highlights

  • Introduction to VignettesMy work will feature vignettes about my life that highlight my personal journey and negotiation around cultural expectations

  • This paper presents an autoethnographic analysis of hybridity and identity negotiation related to young Tamil Canadian women

  • I take the position that growing knowledge about diaspora and gender involves the macro analysis of globalization and migration and attention to the everyday narratives of social relationships, lived experiences, and embodied practices that make up the lives of individuals, families, and communities

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Summary

Introduction

Introduction to VignettesMy work will feature vignettes about my life that highlight my personal journey and negotiation around cultural expectations. Characterises my inability to confront my personal identity within the space of cultural hybridity, and my self-disappointment. This vignette is an illustration of my voice hearing itself for the first time in the third space. Who are you demonstrates the confusion and isolation I experience amidst acculturation, as I struggle to navigate and immerse myself into full “Tamilness” and fulfil the destiny mapped out for myself This vignette admits I am a part of a third space that acknowledges my cultural hybridity, though I have not fully understood it yet. Though Tamil migrants are dispersed all over the world, the diaspora in Canada is of particular interest due to their strong long-distance nationalism to Sri Lanka. This has been achieved through the close-knit Tamil diaspora in Canada establishing various cultural organizations, which helped in the strengthening of community ties

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