IDENTITY CRISIS, HOME AND EXILE: A DIASPORA STUDY OF KANZA JAVED’S NOVEL ASHES, WINE AND DUST

Abstract

Kanza Javed in her novel Ashes, Wine and Dust exposes the bitter reality that is often faced by the diaspora people in the host countries or the foreign lands during the period of migration, banishment, displacement or immigration. The present research paper intends to study the issues of home and exile through the diaspora eyes of a young female protagonist, Mariam, of Javed’s novel Ashes, Wine and Dust. This dissertation investigates and describes the concept and the idea of home by presenting the sense of belongingness along with the feelings of estrangement of the dispersed people in their host countries. The present study examines that the dispersed people are always in a state of feeling not-like-at-home. This research paper also elucidates the facts that the diaspora people always idealizing their homeland as an ideal and a true homeland and these kinds of emotional attachments always connect them with their roots. And in this way the displaced people keep relating themselves to their native lands personally or vicariously. The present study approaches the enormity of the diaspora experience of the dislocated community and through the web of these diasporia experiences, Javed reveals that the dispersed people believe that they are not and can never be fully acknowledged and accepted by their adopted or host countries and always acknowledged as the strangers on a strange land or the strangers within gates.