Folklore as Narrative Strategy: Tradition, Identity, and Resistance in Bharati Mukherjee’s Darkness

Abstract

Darkness, by Bharati Mukherjee has 12 short stories. The compilation, which was published in 1985, is one of the most important works on Indian diasporic literature that provide intimate relationships to displacement, memory, and cultural identity, addresses the experiences of immigrants, especially South Asians in finding their new homes in North America. The purpose of the paper is to critically evaluate how Mukherjee uses folklore as a narrative technique to maneuver through the conflict areas between tradition and modernity, home and exile, and submission and resistance. Mukherjee recreates the disjointed diasporic self through her mythic allusions, folk motifs and cultural symbols to recover indigenous identity in the globalized world. The paper explores Darkness in the context of postcolonial and folklorist theories and states that Mukherjee turns folklore into an instrument of resistance against cultural erasure as well as western hegemony.