‘Daughters of the East’ Encountering the World: A Reading of Bashabi Fraser’s Feminine Trans-self

Abstract

This paper situates Bashabi Fraser, a British South Asian poet, within the larger domain of “Women in Literature”. I would argue that Bashabi Fraser, who is of Indian origin and whose current location is in Edinburgh, Scotland, is not just a mere diasporic writer. Her poetic oeuvre offers a unique lebenswelt of the “globizen” (global citizen). Bashabi describes herself as the ‘daughter of the East’ who dis-homes her nationalist anchorage to encounter the larger world and her poetic universe unfolds through this complex encounter between her ‘two worlds’, her home and the larger world. As a woman writer, she upholds the ideology of transnationality or the feminine trans-self that deflates the patriarchal concepts of bordering, control, occupation and regimentation. Rather than being border-restrictive, the linkages, interdependencies, connections, contradictions, and discontinuities of gender experiences in multiple contexts are highlighted in Bashabi Fraser’s writings.