Identity and the Literary Imagination : Shifting Borders, Emerging Voices in Global South Asia (Volume 1)

Identity and the Literary Imagination: Shifting Borders, Emerging Voices in Global South Asia presents a rigorous and wide-ranging examination of the contested processes through which identities are imagined, negotiated, and transformed within contemporary South Asian literary and cultural production. Positioned at the intersection of postcolonial studies, diaspora studies, gender and sexuality studies, memory studies, and critical regional scholarship, this first volume of a two-volume project investigates the literary articulation of belonging, displacement, subjectivity, and resistance across diverse historical, political, and cultural contexts. Structured around four interconnected thematic sections, the volume examines diasporic identities, borderland subjectivities, gendered and queer selfhoods, and narratives of resistance emerging from marginalized communities and regions.

The contributors explore the complexities of home, exile, migration, and affiliation through analyses of Indian, Tibetan, Muslim, Dalit, queer, and diasporic experiences. The chapters also address the ethical and political dimensions of Partition, transnational mobility, cultural hybridity, collective memory, and historical trauma. They study how literary texts engage with enduring questions of identity and social justice.

Through analyses of works by Jhumpa Lahiri, Imtiaz Dharker, Geetanjali Shree, V. S. Naipaul, Shashi Tharoor, Arundhati Roy, Girish Karnad, and numerous contemporary South Asian writers, the volume demonstrates how literary representation contests dominant narratives and opens new possibilities for cultural and political imagination.

Particular attention is devoted to precarity, counter-memory, disability, surveillance, ecological crisis, linguistic plurality, and subaltern agency. These perspectives reveal the diverse strategies through which individuals and communities confront structures of exclusion and negotiate relations of power. The volume thus presents South Asia as a dynamic field of identities, affiliations, and political contestation.

It makes a substantial contribution to contemporary debates in South Asian literary studies and related fields. The book offers an indispensable resource for scholars, researchers, and students who seek a deeper understanding of identity and the transformative potential of literary representation in an increasingly interconnected world