Restorative Nostalgia and Reconstruction of Imaginary Homeland in The Namesake

Abstract

As a writer of Indian diaspora in America, Jhumpa Lahiri explores the themes like dislocation, displacement and identity. In The Namesake, she writes about the Indian American people’s nostalgia for their home country. The couple Ashima and Ashoke reconstruct an imagined homeland through their interaction with Indian American community around them. The Indian American community helps preserve Indian cultural heritage through holiday celebrations and other parties in which the people in exile speak their own language and perform their cultural rituals. Striding Indian and American two cultures, the Indian American community also has a hybrid identity. This hybridity is a compromise people have to make in order to survive in a different culture but meanwhile it can also be a way to resist against the main stream ideology. In this way, people in the community transcend their former nostalgia and become more open, global nomads in the world.