Coping wiht Khandaanity in Diaspora Spaces: South Asian Women in East Africa

Abstract

This paper provides a survey on the representation of the female East African Asian in literary texts and poses a series of questions on the role of the South Asian woman in East Africa. It seeks to unravel the extent to which South Asian women created their own space within the rigidly established colonial hierarchy. It examines the portrayal of them by writers such as M.G.Vassanji and Peter Nazareth and, more recently, Jameela Siddiqi as either victims of an equally rigid family structure or active agents in the negotiation of new forms of female subjectivity through taking advantage of the privileged social position of Asians in East Africa. Finally it suggests that women are more capable of actively welcoming the prohibited and the transgressive and consequently dismantling obsolete barriers. However, despite the deconstruction of gender relations in Jamila Siddiqi’s work with its embedded critique of the double standards rife within the South Asian community, the paper concludes by observing that the novel that comes to terms with both the female East African Asian’s subaltern state as a woman and her privileged social ranking as an Asian is yet to be written.