1st Edition
Bangladeshi Novels in English Cultural Contact and Migrant Subjectivity
Bangladeshi Novels in English: Cultural Contact and Migrant Subjectivity is the first comprehensive study of Bangladeshi migration and diasporas through eight seminal Bangladeshi novels in English from the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries: Adib Khan’s Seasonal Adjustments and Spiral Road, Farhana H. Rahman’s The Eye of the Heart, Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, Manzu Islam’s Burrow, Nashid Kamal’s The Glass Bangles, Zia H. Rahman’s In the Light of What We Know, Tahmima Anam’s The Bones of Grace. The book situates the study within the English-language literary history and linguistic ethnography of Bangladesh while unveiling the complexities of Bangladeshi Muslim migration from men, women, and children’s perspectives. It challenges the stereotyping of Bengali Muslim migrants as a failure of immigration and multiculturalism and offers a fresh view on cultural contact and the formation of migrant subjectivity at the intersections of gender, race, religion, class, culture, ethnicity, history, politics, and personality.
Introduction: Migration, Myths, and Literature
Part I: Women’s Perspectives
- Women as Bangles, Bangles as Women: Traditions, Traps, and Transformations in Nashid Kamal’s The Glass Bangles
- Housewifery, Triple Entrapments, and Slow Transformation in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane
- A Wasp, a Whale, and a Ship: Women, Nation, and Nomadism in Tahmima Anam’s The Bones of Grace
- “I am so afraid and it hurts so much”: Transient Migration, Women, Romance, and Politics in Farhana H. Rahman’s The Eye of the Heart
Part II: Men’s Perspectives
- Migration, Race, and Traumatic Transculturation in Burrow by Manzu Islam
- “Bridges are Fragile things”: Bonds, Bridges, and Eerie Evolution in Zia Haider Rahman’s In the Light of What We Know
- Stories of Emotional Bedouins in Adib Khan’s Seasonal Adjustments and Spiral Road
Part III: Children’s Perspectives
- When Born Across: Cultural Sustainability, Intergenerational Collisions and Child Agency in Adib Khan’s Seasonal Adjustments and Monica Ali’s Brick Lane
Conclusion: Bangladeshi Novels in English: Cultural Contact and Migrant Subjectivity
Index
Biography
Umme Salma earned a PhD in Postcolonial and Other Literatures in English (focusing on Bangladeshi anglophone literature) from the School of Languages and Cultures, the University of Queensland, Australia. She was a Graduate Digital research fellow at the University of Queensland and an Honorary Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia. She has published research articles and book reviews in South Asian Review, Gitanjali and Beyond, Asiatic and Transnational Literature. Salma is also a bilingual poet, writing and publishing in Bangla and English. As an early career researcher, Salma teaches literature and writing at the University of Queensland, Australia, and has dedicated her time to research and publication.
