Remembering Bangladesh: Tahmima Anam and the Recuperation of a Bangladeshi National Narrative in Diaspora

Abstract

This essay will investigate some of the new ramifications of South Asian nationalisms in the current world, being inflected by global phenomena like diasporas and transnationalism, with reference to the fiction of the British-Bangladeshi author, Tahmima Anam. I argue that Anam's Bangladeshi national affiliation motivates her fiction, which arises out of a desire to assert its distinctiveness from the rest of South Asian identity. I argue that Anam's recuperation of a Bangladeshi national narrative from a position of displacement is an enactment of “long-distance nationalism” (Glick Schiller and Fouron), a form of national and cultural belonging connecting her indelibly to the country of her birth and having a powerful agency in her writing.