A New Self-Identity in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Sister of My Heart

Abstract

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni narrates to all new shades of a new identity crisis such as alienation, marginalization, despair, readjustment and assimilation. Her writings are autobiographical. She includes the Indian-American experience of grabbing with two identities. The postcolonial literature investigates the dislocation of an individual or a group of people and consequent alienation among them. The situation of alienation leads to a sense of loss and based on the rediscovery of their self. Divakaruni’s novel Sister of My Heart (1998) is selected for this research article. From the very beginning, Divakaruni has used the complex web of family differences as her theme. Her themes are alienation, psychological and physical trauma of woman’s new identity. The novel question and challenge women’s place in traditional discourse and suggest a rejection of such discourse. Divakaruni’s women moving away from the submissive role to invent a new identity of their won, who rejects her own traditional values as culture instead of encouraging her, encumbers her. Finally she desires to adapt the values of the country in where she is to get settled. Sociological empowerment is to enable a group or groups of people in the society to arrive at their own decisions.  “Female Character” raises the consciousness among woman that even though the male world tends to allow woman no other place except that of an object, woman can aspire to the subject positions provided.