Space and Transnational Empathy in the Works of Bharati Mukherjee

The burgeoning presence of Indian Diaspora across the world has triggered a new consideration of the cultural theories of nation, identity and international affairs. Depicting the process of negotiating the borders, both physical borders of states and countries and the metaphorical borders, between genders generations and cultures, Bharati Mukherjee, an American writer of Indian origin, raises the question of space and identity of the Indian immigrants in the US. An attempt is made to map the journey of Indian Diaspora from the status of the immigrants to that of the transnational citizens of the world. Analysis of Mukherjee's characters, who mostly belong to the main stream of the third world and the margin of the first world, necessitates a close reading of the theories of post colonial studies and cultural studies . She endeavours to dive deep in to the distorted psyche of the migrants who are straddled between roof and root. The scope of this study lies in its treatment of transnational space which is going to be eminently pertinent in the contemporary politics and international relations. The paper unravels the process of the construction of transnational space and identity of the diaspora and points out the requisites of what is called transnational empathy which is of growing demand in the dynamic cross cultural interactions of the globalized world.Keywords: Migration, Acculturation, Transnational Identity, Empathy, Cross cultural Interactions Ms. Athira Prakash"Space and Transnational Empathy in the Works of Bharati Mukherjee" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-2 | Issue-1 , December 2017, URL: http://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd8237.pdf http://www.ijtsrd.com/humanities-and-the-arts/english/8237/space-and-transnational-empathy-in-the--works-of-bharati-mukherjee/ms-athira-prakash