COUNTER-HEGEMONIC DISCOURSE ON WOMEN: A STUDY OF JHUMPA LAHIRI'S INTERPRETER OF MALADIES

This paper aims to analyze the majority of the short stories in Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies deal with the diasporic postcolonial circumstances of Indian and Indian-American lives. Their hyphenated Indian identities have caused them to be caught between the Western world and the Indian traditions they have left behind, leading to a constant struggle to adjust between the two worlds of the two cultures. These characters' ambivalent identities are what lends the collection's receptiveness to postcolonial studies. This paper addresses the difficulties in negotiating new identities through an examination of the inevitable Self/Other confrontation that occurs during the identity-formation process. It does this by focusing on the trauma and potential success, failure, or resistance of female subjects who negotiate their new identities in their confrontations with the culture of the other.