Migrancy and Memory in Siddhartha Deb’s Novel The Point of Return

Arindam SARMA

doi:10.22901/trans.2016.9.1.129

Siddhartha Deb’s novel The Point of Return (2002) is a nuanced study of the fractured relationship between an indigenous tribal people and Bengali migrants in the undivided state of Assam, and the exilic condition of these migrants in the Northeast of India (especially in Assam and Meghalaya). It also shows the painful process of cartographic reconfigurations of state boundaries along ethnic lines, and the resultant violence, uprootedness, alienation, and continued memory of loss. The paper seeks to investigate how the writer traces the lives of the first generation migrants who came to the new land in search of a better life but were condemned to live precarious lives in their adopted homeland. The novel is also about the post-partition generation who inherited the memory of their parents and grandparents and had to negotiate their own sense of belonging and identity in the face of ethnic assertion by indigenous people in the eastern borderland region. The legacy of this conflict lives on in the Northeast as the post-partition generation continues to grapple with issues like displacement, cultural confrontation, and homelessness. At the same time, we have examined how Deb utilizes the mode of memory to tell his story of migrancy and the trauma of loss and dislocation. The act of remembering, the urge to recall and revisit the historical loss, fracture, and trauma, are insistent in the text even as it grapples with issues like home, identity, citizenship, and belonging in the postcolonial nation-state.

Citation status

KCI Citation Counts (0)
REFERENCES (15)
열림/닫힘 버튼
* 2021년 이후 발행 논문의 참고문헌은 현재 구축 중입니다.

[thesis] Baishya, Amit Rahul / 2010 / Rewriting Nation-State: Borderland Literatures of India and the Question of State Sovereignty / University of Iowa

[journal] Bhatt, Shakti / 2006 / Against Forgetting / Journal of Postcolonial Writing 42(2) : 201~205

[book] Boym, Svetlana / 2001 / The Future of Nostalgia / Basic Books

[journal] Dasgupta, Anindita / 2001 / Denial and Resistance: Sylheti Partition ‘Refugees’ in Assam / Contemporary South Asia 10(3) : 343~360

[book] Deb, Siddhartha / 2002 / The Point of Return / Picador

[book] Gopal, Priyamvada / 2009 / The Indian English Novel: Nation, History, and Narration / Oxford UP

[book] Guha, Amalendu / 1982 / Linguistic Situation in North-East India / North-East Council for Social Science Research : 1~4

[book] Hirsch, Marianne / 1997 / Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory / Harvard UP

[journal] Hirsch, Marianne / 2001 / Surviving Images: Holocaust Photographs and the Work of Postmemory / The Yale Journal of Criticism 14(1) : 5~37

[journal] Hirsch, Marianne / 2008 / The Generation of Postmemory / Poetics Today 29(1) : 103~128

[book] Joshi, Priya / 2004 / In Another Country / Oxford UP

[journal] Laub, Dori / 1991 / Truth and Testimony: The Process and the Struggle / American Imago 18(1) : 75~91

[other] Pisharoty, Sangeeta Barooah / 2002 / A First Timer’s Point of View / Interview with Siddhartha Deb

[journal] Sugg, Kathe / 2002 / ‘I Would Rather Be Dead’: Nostalgia and Narrative in Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy / Narrative 10(2) : 156~173

[book] Tal, Kali / 1996 / Worlds of Hurt: Reading the Literatures of Trauma / Cambridge UP

KJC Korea
Journal Central

Statistics

Tools

Sharing

Issue List

Citation status