Hybridization in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices

Abstract

Postcolonial literature is the literature of the colonized countries and it focuses on the consequences of colonization of a country based on the political and cultural grounds. Even after decolonization, the impact created by the colonizers prevail in the colonized countries and it is reflected in the literary works of these countries. Hybridity is one of the discourses of post colonialism which means the mixing up of language and culture. It arises questions about the colonized people, their own culture or identity. Writers of postcolonial literature focus on the struggle of the colonized people in adapting themselves to the new socio-cultural mileau of the foreign land. Like any other colonized country, India has also produced a wide range of postcolonial literary works. Their writings reflect the inner turmoils faced by immigrants in getting accustomed to new culture and identity with the nostalgia of their homeland. The works of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni depict the immigrants’ plight in a foreign land as she herself is a first generation immigrant. Her works contain myths and stereotypes with the help of which she is able to dissolve boundaries. She, in her work, The Mistress of Spices has made use of the spices which signify myth, in order to escape from the harsh realities of America where the events of the novel take place. The characters, with the help of spices, are able to overcome their hurdles and crave an identity of their own. This paper attempts to analyze how the hybrid culture and the struggle for identity impose psychological trauma in the characters in The Mistress of Spices. Literature broadens our perspectives of world and life as it helps us to probe into the minds of many people. Postcolonial literature depicts the life and sufferings of the people who were colonized by the foreign countries. It further reflects the aftermath conditions of the people and society that had undergone colonization. The colonized people found it difficult to differentiate between what they had been in real and how they had been made into someone new. This sort of amalgamation resulted in hybridity.