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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. e 123"
