Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The South Asian American Canon

2021; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 42; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/abr.2021.0029

2153-4578

Arnab Dutta Roy,

Latin American and Latino Studies

The South Asian American Canon Arnab Dutta Roy (bio) A canon in literature typically refers to a privileged body of works. It denotes works that are accorded special status by scholars and critics with respect to a given author, culture, community, and/or time period. In American literature, the term “canon” is typically invoked in reference to the writings of a select group of authors. This group may include names of figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner, Emily Dickenson, and Toni Morrison. The writings of these authors are considered canonical not just because they are exemplary in terms of their aesthetic and social worth, but also because they exude qualities often hailed as quintessentially American. Emerson’s romanticism is distinctively American. As the critic Harold Bloom declares, his legacy is inescapable and has inspired generations of American romantic writers, who have either battled or embraced his credo. Similarly, Morrison is canonical not only on account of her place in modern and contemporary African American writing, but also because of her influence over American traditions of feminist writing. A canonical work is thus one that withstands the test of time, is culturally influential, and has a wide readership within a given socio-cultural setting. However, it is worth noting that not all works that fulfill these criteria are canonized. This is because canonized works often reflect — and are a product of — a given culture’s dominant ideology. Indeed, despite the fact that Americans today come from diverse backgrounds of culture, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality religion, and socio-economic status, American literary canons have still largely remained dominated by a white male heteronormative presence. Nonetheless, there have been efforts in recent times to expand and redefine canons through the addition of voices that have been traditionally overlooked and whose inclusion could more accurately reflect the diverse composition of the American society. South Asian American writers are perhaps amongst the newest additions to the multiethnic American literary scene. Jhumpa Lahiri, Michael Ondaatje, Agha Shahid Ali, Meena Alexander, and Bharati Mukherjee are names in a growing list of South Asian American writers who, in recent years, have gained immense popularity among readers of American literature. These writers have written about vastly different things, highlighted starkly different socio-cultural outlooks and point of views, and have chosen to express their ideas through a range of different genres including poetry, short stories, essays, drama, and novels. Yet, they have often been united in using their craft to highlight the diverse experiences of South Asians in North America. A central idea that most of their writings have communicated is that South Asians are not a homogenous identity group. Writers such as Lahiri and Ali, for instance, have brought to attention how starkly different the experiences of a first generation South Asian in the US are from the experiences of those belonging to the second or the third generation. Reading their works may also allow a glimpse into what it means to be an Indian immigrant in the US. In contrast, Ondaatje highlights the lives of South Asians in Canada, and his fictions also provide insights into the unique experiences of Sri Lankan expats and immigrants. Alexander’s poetic voice, as different from the others, lends itself to the lives of yet another South Asian immigrant community who have had very distinct experiences. In Poetics of Dislocation (2009), she grapples with envisioning an Asian American aesthetics that would not typecast her experiences through labels like minority, but would uniquely give voice to her persona as someone from India who immigrated to the US via Sudan. When thinking about influential American writers, Bloom has often imagined a composite literary persona. In his view, when writers write, they do so in relation to their precursors. Of course, in some cases, this could be a relationship of acknowledgement, where a writer owes their gratitude to a literary ancestor. Whereas in other cases, it may be a relationship of negation — where the writer rebels against the conventions set by a precursor. Bloom observes that Emerson and Dickinson may be very different authors, but one can often trace elements of “Emerson’s tough hopefulness” in Dickinson’s...