Rasagam, Manohari and Pillai, Shanthini
(2016)
Interpolating South Asian Transnational
Heritage: Allegory In South Asian Diasporic
Metropolitan Young Adult Fiction.
International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies (IJAPS), 12 (1).
pp. 41-60.
ISSN ISSN: 1823-6243
Abstract
Young adult books written by western metropolitan authors clearly cater to a
western audience: the protagonists, settings and the archetypes of these texts are
Eurocentric. Eurocentric concepts and experiences are often assumed to be
universal. This could result in the othering of the non-white imaginary within
young adult fiction. However, multicultural young adult texts are increasingly
available on the global market. This paper investigates a selection of young adult
fiction written by authors of the South Asian diaspora to determine whether the
use of allegory in the form of cultural myths and folklore drawn from an ancestral
cultural repertoire allows these texts to insert themselves into and dismantle the
hegemony of metropolitan Eurocentricism in the consciousness of the diasporic
South Asian reader. To explore this possibility, the following works of South Asian
diasporic metropolitan young adult fiction are analysed: Dahling If You Luv Me
Please Please Smile (1999) by Rukhsana Khan; Bindi Babes by Narindher Dhami
(2005); and Blue Boy (2009) by Rakesh Satyal. This study focuses on the ways in
which the authors of these texts interpolate a South Asian transnational heritage
into the setting of the metropolitan public school, especially through the
allegorical mode. The ultimate aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the
incorporation of South Asian cultural myths and folklore into settings familiar to
young adult readers can contribute to generating awareness of the cultural
heritage of diasporic youth.
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