Women Negotiating Space: Punjabi Diasporic Literature

Abstract

All through literature we find that women who have recognized oppression in the
domestic sphere may choose to register their protest in varied ways. The means of
protest reflect on the codified gender roles in a particular society. My paper Negotiating
Space: Punjabi Diasporic Literature is an attempt to bring out the different ways in
which diasporic Punjabi women characters register their responses in the domestic
sphere of a polygamus/ adulterous marriage and how in an alien land finding
themselves desolate and lonely having cut asunder the umbilical cord they try to
negotiate their way through life, by comparing two short stories written in Punjabi by
Veena Verma. Their ways of protest also give us an insight into the Punjabi diaspora
which continues to be as feudal and conservative in the country of their adoption as it
was in its ancestral land.