Mindscape: A Journal of English & Cultural Studies

Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart: Witnessing American Colonialism in Asia

2024-01-10T08:49:54+00:00

Carlos Bulosan’s America Is In the Heart (first published in 1943) is a masterpiece of autobiographical fiction about the Asian American (specifically the Filipino American) immigrant experience. Its setting is the Philippines and the western United States (particularly California) during the years between World War I and World War II. Its structure is patterned after the success story trajectory of the bildungsroman that culminates in the protagonist’s attainment of the American Dream. But the narrative matter of America Is In the Heart forms an unrelenting witness to the persistence of pernicious American colonial policies vis-à-vis the military, land ownership, and education which exists alongside the ubiquitous demeaning prejudices of racism and classism permeating American attitudes and behavior. This narrative testimony prompts the attentive reader to interrogate the achievability of the American Dream for Bulosan’s first-person narrator-protagonist. Many readers, therefore, come away from a scrutiny of Bulosan’s book with a sense of aporia, a tension that paradoxically adds a layer of complexity to this canonical text even as it may disrupt its ostensibly conventional bildungsroman template.

The Historicity of Food Habits as Imagined in the Folk Literature of Erstwhile Kalingo: A Study through the Folk Songs of Chati-Ghoda of Odisha and Bitiali of West Bengal

2024-01-09T10:42:30+00:00

An effort to get a glimpse of a world-view can be seen through the prisms of rural folk music. They are not only a medium of entertainment for the rural masses, but also a reflection of the untainted rural society that has remained untouched by the humdrum of modernity even today. The rural people live by the age-old practises, beliefs, rituals, and wisdom of traditional knowledge. This paper aims to reproduce the concept of folk music and its typical characteristics, replete with nuances of those pearls of wisdom, that have remained a guiding force for the country people for generations, and how folk music, other than being the prime source of entertainment, is a storehouse of knowledge about the customs, food habits, rituals, and other social behaviours that resonate with the life and living of the populace. This will also highlight some of the extensive citations from the available oral traditions of music.

Mobility in Dhakal’s Seti Pani Kali Pani

2024-01-09T10:48:27+00:00

This research focuses in the area of niyatra, a Nepali term to denote a travel writing with the writer’s personal feelings and experiences. Prateek Dhakal’s Seti Pani Kali Pani picturizes many distant villages and hillsides of western Nepal and Nainital, India. This research is helpful to introduce the local area into the international arena and Nepali niyatra theory and literature in global context. It adopts Balkrishna Pokhrel, Nirmohi Byaas and Jaya Chhangchha’s theory on niyatra as research approach. The research also borrows concepts of travel writing proposed by some other western theorists like Carl Thomson and Mary Baine Campbell. For them, mobility is a key point of travel writing in general and niyatra literature in particular. This research addresses the issue how the theme of mobility is dominating in the text. The major objective of the research is to point out the movement from the beginning to the end of the text. The findings present many evidences of movement in Dhakal’s Seti Pani Kali Pani. To show the mobility, the description of landscape and places, society and culture and events and lifestyle in the text is analyzed. The research concludes that Dhakal’s Seti Pani kali Pani has the theme of mobility. This text has to be studied further by using another theme of Niyatra that is depiction of local.

Ugly Affective Politics in “Yambunera” by Bina Theeng

2024-01-09T10:53:55+00:00

This paper studies affective politics generated by ugly feelings such as fear, contempt, and shame in the characters of the story “Yambunera” written by Bina Theeng from anthology of stories named Yambunera. The first part of this paper emphasizes on ugly feeling and affective politics as the major theoretical framework. Affect theory has evolved from studying emotions to using these emotions to analyze different aspects of human life, even nature. Ugly feelings are also called negative feelings which are related to emotions. The study investigates how these negative emotions are created, circulated and politicized. The second part is examination and interpretation of the characters of “Yambunera” through the negative feelings generated in them due to the state’s brutality and discrimination. The state is the major agency of rule and control that suppresses minority communities through different mediums will the major discussion of this part. This paper explores the state’s treatment on indigenous communities which has created negative feelings in the members. The state needs to provide basic needs and rights to all citizens. However, in the context of Nepal, the state has been using different methods of exploitation and suppression of native nations though it is a multicultural country.

Stereotypes and Gender Roles in Pandey’s Jiyara: Changing the Script

2024-01-09T11:04:40+00:00

Nayan Raj Pandey’s Jiyara, an anthology of stories, portrays the prevailing gender practices in the Madhesi community that make women’s life devastated. The anthology highlights that existing gender norms promote inequality, violence and injustice against women. So, the study investigates how the gender roles are instituted and imposed to the females in the story “Janaani” in particular and in the Madhesi community in general. It scrutinizes the issues related to socially prescribed gender roles that bring in the life of Madhesi women. This paper assesses the factors that force the Madhesi women to subvert the scripted gender roles. To address these objectives, Judith Butler’s ideas on gender performativity, gender regulation and gender subversion are used. In Butler’s understanding of gender, the ‘performances of gender’ are enforced through the social script. She views that an individual’s gender is created by performing the script repetitively; however, the act of repetition creates the space for the individual to repeat the acts differently. Therefore, though a society constrains the individual in stereotyped gender roles, one seeks various possibilities within those constraints to break them. The selected story illuminates the prevailing gender stereotypes in the Madhesi community that act as a prime cause of the plight of Jamenty, the central character of “Janaani”. The paper concludes that since gender is an unstable entity which can be constituted by the individual differently, Jamenty, a representative female of the Madhesi community, subverts the socially imposed gender roles.

The Song of Suffering, Reconciliation and Redemption: A New Critical Reading of “Sonny’s Blues”

2024-01-09T11:10:07+00:00

This research paper examines the story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin that depicts the everlasting sorrows and sufferings of two black brothers residing in Harlem, New York. The omnipresent suffering is caused primarily by their African-American identity that leads toward the split between the brothers and ultimately fuels the intra-racial conflict in the black community as a whole. In addition, amid the never-ending troubles and deeper wounds of the black brothers, jazz music, i.e., Sonny’s blues is offered as a soother and a healer that erases their pains and sufferings, and as a thread that reconciles, reawakens, and redeems the whole black community. To analyze such familial and communal upheavals which have directly afflicted the lives of the major characters in the story and the crucial role that jazz music plays in it, this paper draws the theoretical reading from a literary movement called New Criticism that treats a text as an autonomous whole, developed by Cleanth Brooks, Allene Tate, John Crowe and others.

Do Humanity and Duty Conflict? A Moral-Philosophical Reading

2024-01-09T11:18:08+00:00

The purpose of this article is to explore the idea how humanity (human values) and duty conflict in many circumstances. I believe that they cannot be done at the same time and when one tries to do one of them alone, the other comes on the way. And to prove this, I have referred to characters and quotes from different areas of knowledge such as Buddhist and Hindu religions, literature, law, education, medical profession, war, army and, especially from the Bhagavad-Gita. Humanity or human values are truth, right conduct, love, peace, and non-violence. All religions are formed under this basic foundation. Duty is an obligatory act or a course of action that is to be fulfilled according to one’s position, social custom, law, religion, or morality of a particular culture.

Celebration of the Young Adult’s Body in Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye

2024-01-09T11:25:53+00:00

This paper studies the celebration of young adult’s body in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. It analyzes why and how the young adult protagonist Holden Renaultin in The Catcher in the Rye celebrates the body since the young adults perceive their bodies as the means of power, change, conflict and solution. It argues that young adults like Holden celebrate their bodies to establish their identity, freedom and to demonstrate their maturity. They also exhibit their individuality through their celebration of the body. They desire to be noticeable and different from others by means of the body celebration. This paper contends that young adults celebrate their bodies by means of exercise, wearing different types of clothes, playing and dancing. For the analytical purpose, it basically engages with the critical insights of Judith Butler, Elinor Fuchs, Rush Rehm, Michel Foucault and Clinton Sanders et al. Finally, the study expects to open up a new approach in the study of body celebration of young adults and its consequences.

Representing the Marginalized Tamang Community in BinaTheeng’s Yaambunera [Near Kathmandu]: A Hallian Analysis

2024-01-09T11:36:33+00:00

This paper attempts to analyse Bina Theeng’s “Yaambunera”, the title story of the anthology Yaambunera, exploring the lived experiences of ethnic Taman people of Taulung, an ignored and unheard village, which is an adjoined village of the Kathmandu valley. The paper discusses the lifestyles, socio-economic condition, struggles, hardships and sufferings of the illiterate Tamang community that analyses the literary value and purpose of representing this marginalized world of common Tamang people. Stuart Hall’s concept of representation has been applied as a theoretical tool to achieve the set objectives of the study. Hall argues that representations are not independent and innocent reflections of the real but they are cultural constructions which are selected and constituted by power. In this sense, representation is a cultural product rather than an autonomous process of constructing a meaning. From this theoretical stand, the story is analysed as a discursive representation of Tamang people’s marginalized world that produces and defines the overshadowed body of knowledge about ethnic Tamang community and their ways of life. This study, therefore, provides an insight to see and understand the ways of life and sufferings of poor Tamang people of Taulung, an overlooked village though the village is adjoined to the capital city Kathmandu, Nepal.

Structural Reflection: Race and Class in James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues”

2024-01-09T11:41:33+00:00

This research paper explores that the African American repression against the Afro- American community in American society takes place primarily due to two factors: race and class. Behind the story of the dejected position of the Black community, there is not only a single reason but rather multiple factors that are intertwined. Basically, Baldwin’s story "Sonny’s Blues" represents that race and class seem to be contributing aspects to their disregarded presence in society. In addition, most people believe that Afro-Americans are treated as others simply due to racism in the white-dominated American society. However, using two theories: Marxist classism and African American theories, analyzing the story Sonny’s Blues, this paper aims to show how both class and race simultaneously become the basic foundation of oppression against the Afro- American community. Actually, for how long and how deeply Afro-Americans have been subjugated in American society as a consequence of their race and economic class. It means the story reveals both economic class and race would be responsible for their wretched status in the White Mainstream American society.

Between Mythology and Modernity in Hernan Diaz’s In the Distance

2024-01-09T11:47:23+00:00

This paper deals with Hernan Diaz’s In the Distance (2017) that challenges and subverts conventions and myths of the West. It follows the journey of Håkan Söderström, a young Swedish immigrant who arrives in California by mistake and attempts hard to cross the continent in order to his brother, Linus in New York. Håkan Söderström becomes a legendary and solitary figure in the eyes of the indigenous people and the immigrants who meet him in the landscape of the American West. Along the way, he encounters various characters and situations that expose the violence, racism, and exploitation of the American frontier. He also undergoes a personal transformation from a naive and innocent boy to a legendary and solitary figure. This paper aims to analyze how Diaz uses mythology and modernity as two contrasting and complementary themes to explore the identity and experience of Håkan and the American West. Drawing on the critical works of Jung, Campbell, and others, the paper examines how Håkan embodies the archetypes of the hero, the wanderer, and the outsider, and how his journey reflects the stages of the monomyth. The paper also discusses how Diaz employs elements of realism, surrealism, and science fiction to create a hybrid and innovative narrative that questions the historical and ideological assumptions of the western genre. The paper argues that In the Distance, Diaz revisits, reimagines and reinvents the western as a genre that can address the complexities and contradictions of the contemporary world.

Damphu: The Symbol of Tamang Cultural Identity

2024-01-09T11:53:29+00:00

Damphu, a musical instrument, embodies specific meaning in Tamang community. Since damphu is compulsorily played on the auspicious occasions, marriage, cultural ceremony and festivals, it always remains at the center of Tamang cultural values. There is an interesting story of the creation of Damphu. Tamba (Spokesperson of Tamang community) narrates the story of Pengdorje (Tamang ancestor), who created the musical instrument collecting different materials from the forests of high hill, mountain and madesh, through his song. Damphu is an important symbol of Tamang cultural identity, which is also taken as the source of Tamang knowledge and aesthetics. Against the backdrop, the paper sheds light on the creation of damphu and analyzes its cultural significance on the basis of Shantabir Lama’s (Pakhrin) book Tamba, Kaiten, Wai, Rimthim: The Tamang Ancestor’s Culture and Song (2014). I have employed Clifford Geertz’s cultural interpretation that emphasizes culture as a set of ‘control mechanism’ for the theoretical backing. On top of that, I have also consulted Amrit Yonjan- Tamang’s idea of Tamba philosophy to deal with Tamang cultural aesthetics.

Incarcerated Body and Political Self in Tek Nath Rijal’s Torture Killing Me Softly: Bhutan Through the Eyes of Mind Control Victim

2024-01-09T11:59:34+00:00

Tek Nath Rijal’s prison narrative Torture Killing Me Softly: Bhutan Through the Eyes of Mind Control Victim narrates the story of a Bhutanese captive in one’s own state. The prison narrative describes the holocaust-type imprisoned life and state tortured politically willed refugee. The captive accuses the state for secretly monitoring, and manipulating his state of mind through some highly sophisticated, lethal and anti-human ultra-modern “Mind Control Machine” (specific title is unavailable in the narratives). Adds on, the captive is seen to be fighting with his state-owned body’s involuntary actions through his own body’s voluntary conscience. The fight between voluntarily and involuntarily controlled self becomes so confusing that it brings readers doubt his objective narration. As the sociologist Anthony Giddens concerns that in the time of high modernity individuals reflect on their self-body to define the reliable sense of identity and sane-self, the captive’s narration attempts to justify the his sanity and ‘politically correct self’. The captive’s allegation on the machine-technology for reconstructing his body restrains him into a controlled and split subject.

Mountaineering Chronicles: Exploring Climbers’ Experiences on the Ascents of Mount Everest and Mount Annapurna

2024-01-09T12:47:40+00:00

Mountaineering possesses an inherent allure that captivates individuals invoking a deep fascination within the human psyche and mountaineering narratives demonstrate that the enthralling nature of this adventure sport brings a sense of inner peace and contentment to climbers’ lives. By ascending towering peaks like Mount Everest and Mount Annapurna, they establish a profound connection with nature, pushing one’s physical and mental boundaries, and acquiring heightened self-awareness and understanding of the human condition. Furthermore, mountaineering is regarded as a source of knowledge, power, purity, and faith. Despite the inherent risk, the reward of experiencing sublimity at the summit is worthwhile. Climbers passionately strive for a sense of fulfillment that can only be attained by reaching the top of the mountain, a world apart from everyday life.

Analysing Bijaya Hitan’s some Selected Stories from an Eco-centric Approach

2024-01-09T12:53:09+00:00

This paper makes the Ecocritical reading of three stories, namely, “Bagmati Blues”, “Saharle Panchhayeki Buhari” (My translation “A Daughter-in-Law Disregarded by a City”) and “Nawabarshale Janmayeka Brykshyaharu” (My translation “The Groves Bred by New Year”), written by an ecowriter, Bijaya Hitan. Drawing on the Ecocritical and Ecofeminist theories of Lawrence Buell, Vandana Shiva, Greta Gaard, and some relevant journals and books, it analyzes the portrayals of non-human world that is the Bagmati river and her declining physical environment. As soon as Bagmati river enters the Kathmandu valley near Sundarijal, the water starts to deteriorate. The river has been used as dumping site for domestic and industrial waste water and solid waste. Besides that, the river has been widely used for sand extraction and land encroachment through squatter settlements at the bank of the river. Hitan, in his three short stories questions the ethics, policies, and cultural values of people at Kathmandu for treating Bagmati as an instrument, only a means of human ends. This paper scrutinizes the power of words, subject, images and narrative of aforementioned stories to reinforce to understand the oppressive human-environment relations causing multiple forms of ecodegradation that afflict Bagmati river today. The significance of this study is to exhibit how Hitan’s ecowriting has proved to be an effective means of communicating the burgeoning environmental concerns of Bagmati and resolving this environmental harm through the adoption of possible alternatives practically and morally.