Performing and Resisting Motherhood

Intersectional Feminist Readings of Cultural Identity in Diasporic South Asian Novels

Abstract

The paper examines the transformative potential of narrative in reconstructing cultural representations of motherhood within the South Asian diaspora through an analysis of two diasporic texts: Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine and Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake. Drawing on a hybrid feminist theory that integrates gender performativity and intersectionality, this paper demonstrates how diasporic texts portray women’s roles within social norms through episodes centred on significant events in the protagonists’ lives. The comparative analysis identifies instances in these texts where gender is enacted, rejected, and reimagined as powerful sites of feminist struggle. Findings illustrate how Jasmine depicts identity beyond culturally predetermined scripts, while The Namesake explores the expectations placed on a migrant mother within traditional Indian motherhood. The performative negotiations of these characters reveal how cultural, racial, and migratory identities intersect to shape their sense of self and empowerment. The findings highlight how these narratives nuance experiences of compliance and resistance, embodying the protagonists’ self-interpretations and reshaping them through multiple, inflected identities. This study contributes to feminist literary studies by demonstrating how literature articulates gender through identity and complexity across transnational (globalized) borders. In this way, the research emphasizes literature’s role as a vital tool for socio-cultural analysis, illuminating diasporic narratives as not only representations of existing cultural models but also as agents that transform norms related to womanhood and motherhood.