Project of Ghaitree - Indian Americans as Native Informants

Native Informants and Transnationalism. This work holds its premises in Edward Said and Salman Rushdie''s concerns for eradicating disparaging images of non-western worlds that were propagated in British colonial discourses, and creating new, more accurate ones through the voice of a marginalized "Other." Mukherjee, Lahiri and Narayan as postcolonial “native informants” take on the responsibility to debunk postcolonial cultural stereotpyes though the Indian diaspora. Indian Americans, as one of the new immigrant groups in the ever evolving American ethnic landscape, find that their ancestral, cultural scripts are challenged in a different geopolitical space - the same cultural heritage that they held on to possessively during the British colonial era. A prominent indicator is the attempt to implement and develop an “imagined community” that is concerned with the upkeep of Indian cultural purification and an allegiance to a “motherland” left behind. Their "ethno-spaces" resist acculturation from U.S. westernization, subsequently creating conflicts for first and second generations who both attempt to negotiate a middle ground.