“Wonder why we can’t have normal food”: New Poetry from South Asian Diasporic Women poets

Abstract

New literatures have emerged from processes of colonization that had once affected and altered the fabric of large territories of the world since the fifteenth century well into the latter half of the twentieth century. The newness of these literatures consists in their articulation often but not limited to the effects of colonization, the march of capitalism across the globe, the emergence of new diasporas and their struggle to find their voice in the new world, and so on. This paper hopes to locate some of these new voices in the context of South Asian poetry. The works of three diasporic women poets based in the West, but who trace their ancestry to countries such as India and Bangladesh will be studied in order to realize the imaginative connection that these poets forge with South Asia in the process of creating their work.