Oldal 125 [125]
THE SOUTH ASIAN CANADIAN DIASPORA:
A TRANSNATIONAL COMMUNITY AND ITS LITERARY
REPRESENTATION IN ANITA RAU BADAMI’S
CAN YOU HEAR THE NIGHTBIRD CALL?
—40>—
MARIA PALLA?
ABSTRACT
This paper concentrates on how transnational connections and identities are
formed and negotiated across borders both on the level of the South Asian
diaspora as such in Canada and the individuals presented in Badamis
novel. The interstitial space transmigrants occupy is a site where ethnic and
national categorization becomes ambivalent and the in-betweenness of these
people offers opportunities to address issues pertaining to both the local and
the global.
In her novel Anita Rau Badami, an Indo-Canadian like her characters,
follows the intertwining stories of three female protagonists and their family
members. All of them are attached to their homeland in India in various ways,
while some of them are linked to Canada, too, as the latter becomes their
adopted home. Badami also revisits traumatic and violent events related to
the Komagata Maru incident of 1914, the Partition of India in 1947, and the
bombing of Air India flight 182 in 1985 to explore their lasting effects on the
South Asian diaspora. Thus, the investigation of her narrative moving between
the personal and the political reveals the ambiguous outcomes resulting from the
transnational interconnectedness of historical events as well as individual lives.
INTRODUCTION
In this paper, the South Asian Canadian diaspora is examined as a community
of transnational migrants. After a brief survey of South Asian immigration
to Canada and the growing influence of this complex group of people, their
literary representation is exemplified by Anita Rau Badami’s Can You Hear
the Nightbird Call?, the author’s third novel, published in 2006. Like a number
of her characters in the book, including two of the female protagonists, the
author is a first-generation immigrant from India. In the discussion of the
! Pázmány Péter Catholic University.
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