Diasporic Consciousness of Women in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Oleander Girl

Abstract

            Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni possesses a high rank in the contemporary circle of Indian Diaspora.  She projects the struggle, footlessness and anxiety as also the adaptation and assimilation of foreign cultures by the Indian diaspora.  Indian females are physically and mentally enslaved by traditions in their native country but they encounter overwhelming experiences in a foreign land.  Divakaruni delicately portrays how expatriate women are naturally endowed with the feminine ability to relate simultaneously to two homes.  They employ wisdom and compassion to empathize with two different cultures, Indian and America.  They synthesize the moderate and the best in the two cultures and thus heal the fractured selves of their own and those of fellow-beings.  Divakaruni has given a realistic and delicate portrayal of those women in the novels. Divakaruni has explored the diasporic consciousness in Oleander Girl efficiently. She has presented cross cultural understanding and search for identity in a foreign country with a great mastery in the guise of the protagonist of this novel Korobi, a seventeen year old girl. Divakaruni in her novel Oleander Girl skillfully pictures the empowering female characters and explains the height and depth of feminine strength across the generational divide.  It is the story of love, loss, discovery and the ultimate search for self.