Rajorshi Das
Assistant Professor (ad-hoc), Indraprastha College for Women. Email: dasrajorshi@gmail.com
Volume 9, Number 2, 2017 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v9n2.32
Received May 10, 2017; Revised July 23, 2017; Accepted July 25, 2017; Published August 18, 2017.
Abstract
This paper explores the ways in which Shyam Selvadurai’s The Hungry Ghosts (2013) conforms to the national underpinnings of the Sri Lankan and by extension South Asian diaspora while simultaneously choosing mourning over rage as a way of living together. In his overt reliance on a mythical structure and Buddhist philosophy, the author betrays the entry of the homonational body as an ideal citizen within the complex geopolitical aspirations of South Asia where family and ethnicity are integral to the formation of self. Race and region therefore reign supreme over questions of desire and companionate bonding.
Keywords: Shyam Selvadurai, The Hungry Ghosts, Queer Diaspora, Sinhalese, Tamil, Sexuality, South Asia, Buddhism
