Poetics of Migration Journeys

Abstract

Using the braid and sari as the framework and defining tropes that unify my collected poems of Memory Braids and Sari Texts: Weaving Migration Journeys, I carry the memory of independent India. As a poet-critic-literary theorist, I analyze the layered and textured content and structure of my poetry as cognitive, affective and spiritual dimensions of my migrant experiences. I specify how this poetry collection explores one woman’s vivid and sometimes muted memories of her life in India, her move to the US, her diaspora self-making and her connections to other immigrant and diaspora South Asian writers, like Chitra Divakaruni and Imtiaz Dharkar, and global diaspora writers. In so doing, I also theorize the poetics of connected and relational ecology in migration journeys.

Presenters

Pushpa Parekh
Professor, English, Spelman College, Georgia, United States

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

2024 Special Focus—Traveling Concepts: The Transfer and Translation of Ideas in the Humanities

KEYWORDS

Migration, Diaspora, Journeys, Poetics, Literature, Framework, Tropes, Writers