Looking Backward to a Distant Land: South Asian Diaspora and Function of Nostalgia in “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs,” “Mrs. Sen’s” and The Inheritance of Loss

Abstract

A tendency of the protagonists of South Asian diaspora literatures is to look backward to their left behind land in nostalgic reminiscence. This nostalgic reminiscence, however, should not be thought of as a debilitating form of escapism; instead, the diasporic protagonists’ nostalgia offers valuable insights into their present condition of disenfranchisement. In this paper, analyzing the diasporic experiences of the protagonists of three literary works of South Asian diaspora—Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs,” Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Mrs. Sen’s” and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, I contend that exclusion from first-class citizenship rights, marginalization and the inability to exercise rights and power result in a sense of alienation in the protagonists which consequently lead them to be nostalgic. Simultaneously, I challenge the general tendency of seeing nostalgia as a mere uncritical yearning for the lost home, and using Iris Marion Young’s institutional racism theory and the theories of Stuart Tannock and Fred Davis on nostalgia, I advocate to see nostalgia from a more critical angle — where nostalgia not only functions as active critique but is also instrumental in unveiling the protagonists’ desire for equality and empowerment.