Reading Cultural Representations of the Double Diaspora

Reading Cultural Representations of the Double Diaspora: Britain, East Africa, Gujarat is the first detailed study of the cultural life and representations of the prolific twice-displaced Gujarati East African diaspora in contemporary Britain. An exceptional community of people, this diaspora is disproportionally successful and influential in resettlement, both in East Africa and Britain. Often showcased as an example of migrant achievement, their accomplishments are paradoxically underpinned by legacies of trauma and deracination. The diaspora, despite its economic success and considerable upward social mobility in Britain, has until now been overlooked within critical literary and postcolonial studies for a number of reasons. This book attends to that gap. Parmar uniquely investigates what it is to be not just from India, but too Africahow identity forms within, as the study coins, the double diaspora. Parmar focuses on cultural representation post-twice migration, via an interdisciplinary methodology, offering new contributions to debates within diaspora studies. In doing so, the book examines a range of cultures produced amongst, or about, the diaspora, including literary representations, culinary, dance and sartorial practices, as well as visual materials.

Explores and interprets cultural production and strategies of identity formation amongst the prolific Gujarati East African diaspora in Britain, to probe the gaps and joints between migrant achievement, successful and influential resettlement, trauma, deracination and home-making Nuances the theoretical designation of "diaspora", to broaden that field of study, by demonstrating how diasporic movement exists upon multiple axes of migration Reveals rich, unexplored narratives of double diasporic belonging by drawing upon interdisciplinary methodological approaches and resources from performance studies, trauma studies, the digital humanities, diaspora studies, cultural and literary studies, postcolonial studies, Indian Ocean studies and South Asian studies

Autorentext
Maya Parmar is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in English Literature at The Open University, UK, as well as an Honorary Research Fellow with the College of Humanities at the University of Exeter, UK. She has been published in the journals Wasafiri (2017), Interventions (2015), South Asian Popular Culture (2014), and Atlantis (2013), as well as in the edited collection entitled South-Asian Fiction in English: Contemporary Transformations (2016).

Inhalt

1. Introduction: Producing culture in the double diaspora.- 2. The gastropoetics of The settler's cookbook: Diasporic trauma and embodied narratives.- 3. The performing body of Navratri: Dancing dandiya, dressing to impress.- 4. Picturing the modern self: Vernacular modernity and temporal synchronicity.- 5. Conclusion.- 6. Epilogue: Forging links and loyalties: Exporting Indian national identity, shaping digital diasporic identity.