Diasporic essence in the lowland: an overview

This paper delves into Jhumpa Lahiri’s 2013 novel, The Lowland, to analyze the diasporic experience of the Indian born characters. Lahiri demonstrates the characters’ hopes and fears, certainties and dilemmas, along with their joys and grief. The Lowland reveals how the diasporic characters struggle with their new condition in the host country, and how they pass through the liminal stage to negotiate hybrid identities. This research concludes that in spite of the disturbing aspects of diasporic life including uncertainty, marginality, and unbelonging over which the characters possess no control, they are capable of surviving and even flourishing in the foreign social milieu. The novel presents the predicament of ruined hopes of parents left behind in India, problematic family ties in America and above all, contrast between an idealist frame of mind and a practical one.