Identity and Diasporic Trauma in Mira Jacob's "The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing"
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.21.1.4Keywords:
assimilation, memory, identity, trauma, diasporic experienceAbstract
This article explores the assimilation politics in Mira Jacob's Novel The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing (2013). The intersection of memory, trauma, and mourning with reference to immigrant experience is discussed. In terms of assimilation, Barkan's six stage model is critiqued, and diasporic 'hybridity' is proposed as an alternative to the notion of total assimilation. In the analysis of traumatic experience, the paper makes reference to Caruth's formulations of the 'abreactive model'. The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing (2013) is a transcultural text that represents the gap that truly exists between the first-generation immigrants and their offspring. It is a typical trauma novel featuring timeless and unspeakable experiences. The novel does not present a postcolonial collective trauma but invariably an example of diasporic imagined trauma. By presenting two contrasting generations in her novel, Mira Jacob attempts to highlight the dilemmas that baffle diasporas in the United States particularly of those that resist assimilation. Much of the narrative projects the haunting presence of home, and the anguish of personal loss experienced by first generation immigrants. Moreover, the novel questions the nostalgic and romantic engagements with the past and it promotes a bold affirmation of the culture of the adopted land. In other words, Mira Jacob calls for more genuine engagements with the new culture that the second and the third-generation immigrants are more exposed to than their home culture because their in-between status leaves them with no choice.
References
Alexander, J. C. (2004). Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma. Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. Berkeley. https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520235946.003.0001
Antonsich, M. (2009). On territory, the nation-state and the crisis of the hyphen. Progress in human geography, 33(6), 789-806. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132508104996
Balaev, M. (2008). Trends in literary trauma theory. Mosaic: A journal for the interdisciplinary study of literature, 149-166.
Barkan, E. (1995). Race, Religion, and Nationality in American Society: A Model of Ethnicity - From Contact to Assimilation. Journal of American ethnic History 14(2), 38-101.
Bhabha, H. (1993). Location of Culture. Routledge.
Brah, A. (1996). Cartographies of diaspora: Contesting identities. Psychology Press.
Caruth, C. (2016). Unclaimed experience: Trauma, narrative, and history. JHU Press.
Georgiou, M. (2010). Identity, space and the media: Thinking through diaspora. Revue européenne des migrations internationales, 26(1), 17-35. https://doi.org/10.4000/remi.5028
Gordon, M. M. (1973). Assimilation in American life: The role of race, religion, and national origins. Oxford University Press on Demand.
Guignery, V. (2011). Hybridity, Why It Still Matters. In Vanessa Guignery. Catherine Perso-Miquel, & Francois Specq (Eds.), Hybridity: Forms and Figures in Literature and the Visual Arts (pp. 1-10). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Jacob, M. (2013). The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing. Bloomsbury.
Jelin, E., & Kaufman, S. G. (2017). Layers of memories: twenty years after in Argentina. In Timothy, G. A., G. Dawson, M. Roper. (Eds.), Commemorating War: The Politics of Memory. Routledge. (pp. 89-110). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315080956
Kołodziejczyk, D. (2018). From Exile to Migrancy: Eastern and Central European Models of Cosmopolitical Writing. Journal of Austrian-American History, 2(2), 91-115. https://doi.org/10.5325/jaustamerhist.2.2.0091
Mishra, V. (2007). The literature of the Indian diaspora: theorizing the diasporic imaginary. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203932728
Nederveen Pieterse, J. P. (2001). Hybridity, so what? The Anti-hybridity Backlash and the Riddles of Recognition. Theory, Culture & Society 18(2), 219-245. https://doi.org/10.1177/02632760122051715
Nititham, D. S. (2016). Making home in diasporic communities: Transnational belonging amongst Filipina migrants. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315593333
Papastergiadis, N. (2018). The turbulence of migration: Globalization, deterritorialization and hybridity. John Wiley & Sons.
Park, R. E., & Burgess, E. W. (1993). Introduction to the Science of Sociology. Chicago University Press.
Seyhan, A. (2001). Writing outside the Nation. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400823994
Trodd, Z. (2007). Hybrid Constructions: Native Autobiography and the Open Curves of Cultural Hybridity. In: Jopi Nyman and Joel Kuortti, (Eds.), Reconstructing Hybridity: Post-Colonial Studies in Transition. Rodopi. (pp. 137–161). https://doi.org/10.1163/9789401203890_009
Visser, I. (2011). Trauma theory and postcolonial literary studies. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 47(3), 270-282. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2011.569378
Walter, E. V. (1988). Placeways: A theory of the human environment. UNC Press Books.
Weber, M. (2002). The Protestant ethic and the "spirit" of capitalism and other writings. Penguin.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Jameel Alghaberi, Sanjay Mukherjee
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Access Policy and Content Licensing
All published articles on the ESNBU site are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. It allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, even for commercial purposes. The terms on which the article is published allow the posting of the published article (Version of Record) in any repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Note that prior to, and including, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2024, articles were licensed under the Non-commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. The transition to CC BY 4.0 is effective as of Volume 11, Issue 1, 2025.
In other words, under the CC BY 4.0 license users are free to
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially.
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
Under the following terms:
Attribution (by) - You must give appropriate credit (Title, Author, Source, License), provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Notice: No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.
If the law requires that the article be published in the public domain, authors will notify ESNBU at the time of submission, and in such cases the article shall be released under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver CC0 1.0 Universal.
Copyright
Copyright for articles published in ESNBU are retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. Authors retain full publishing rights and are encouraged to upload their work to institutional repositories, social academic networking sites, etc. ESNBU is not responsible for subsequent uses of the work. It is the author's responsibility to bring an infringement action if so desired by the author.
Exceptions to copyright policy
Occasionally ESNBU may co-publish articles jointly with other publishers, and different licensing conditions may then apply.
