A Postcolonial Reading of Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Mrs. Sen’s” Through the Lens of Homi Bhabha

As one of the dominant fields of cultural studies, postcolonialism initially deals with the interactions between colonizersand colonized. However, as time went by, West's domination of its colonies began to disappear on the surface level.Although colonialism seems to have ended in its official form, the wave of immigration in recent decades has heraldednew versions of colonialism. Thus, attention to the phenomenon of migration and cultural products around it has gaineda special place in postcolonial studies. Therefore, postcolonial theory has not limited its agenda to the study ofcolonized countries and empires but has given it a global dimension by analyzing situations of minorities such asimmigrants. When people from the East began to immigrate to the West, they face with many problems. Theseimmigrants began to write about these problems and their life as an immigrant in so-called ‘the promised land’, while,postcolonial theorists try to identify and examine the suppressed voices of these immigrants. One of these postcolonialscholars is Homi K. Bhabha who contributes a lot to postcolonialism and diaspora literature. Among Bhabha’scontribution to postcolonial theory, I will go through his concepts of ‘unhomeliness’, ‘liminality’, ‘hybridity’, and‘mimicry’. At the course of this paper, at first, I will discuss postcolonialism and its study of immigrant’s literature.Next, I will move on to present one of the most eminent postcolonial figures, Homi Bhabha and his contribution topostcolonialism. Then after giving a brief summary about Jhumpa Lahiri and her works, finally, I will attempt to read“Mrs. Sen’s” in the light of Homi Bhabha’s postcolonial concepts to conclude that the story of colonialism, even in theform of postcolonialism, goes on as far as those who are detached and deprived have no way but just to wish for solittle thing as a fish.

کلیدواژه ها:

Postcolonialism ، Diaspora Literature ، Homi Bhabha ، Jhumpa Lahiri ، “Mrs.Sen’s”